Control
by Artemis Reiko
Summary: Serial Killer AU! Gray is disposing of a body when Natsu walks in on him. There's a fight, and Gray drugs him and takes him. His newest project, but they have too many secrets in common, affected by a shady past that changed them both. Gray has a line that he can't cross, but it's hard not to when Natsu just won't break. Inspired by the Nightcore version of Halsey's, "Control."
1. How It All Started

Gray did not have the time for a red light. He was trying so hard to keep a low profile tonight only for people to get in his way, for all of the lights to coordinate together to impede him passage, and for too many fucking traffic cameras to make themselves visible.

He had on way too many clothes. Still, as annoying as it was to look like a blizzard came through, he knew it was a necessity. Hide the weight, height, and facial structure as much as possible. Break into the dentist's office or servers and destroy the dental records they may have that can be used for a positive identification. Never get anything that requires a fingerprint. Never get marked by the system. Never join social media. Never share a picture online. Never use a single internet connection more than once unless it's properly encrypted.

There were rules to follow to stay off the radar. A man like Gray could never break any of these rules. Any miscalculation, any deviation from the structure he'd created for himself and he'd be on a one way ride to isolation, maybe the lethal injection. It all depended how much of what he'd done rose to the surface.

Gray was twenty-one. It wasn't a very… mature age, all things considered, especially not in his circumstances, but he started early. Much earlier than anyone of the same breed could claim. Compared to him, even the most experienced in the... practice... were amateurs. He still remembered how it all started.

 _Gray sat on the far end of the couch, away from all of the other children. Every so often, he winced and closed his eyes, clenching little fists and jaws. They thought he couldn't hear them but adults were never as subtle as they liked to believe._

 _Two women stood at the other end of the room, whispering frantically toward one another._

" _You can't be serious… That's… That's horrible."_

" _We're aware."_

" _You can't just leave him here! What about his father? He_ must _have a father."_

" _If he does, we can't find the man."_

 _She shook her head. "No, I can't! We're meant to help children that have been through abuse! Not… not…." She trailed off, glancing at Gray, alone and silent._

" _Trauma is trauma."_

 _She glared at the woman a few feet in front of her. "That isn't just trauma. Can you even imagine what that is doing to his mind? A child… watching that happen to his mother. I can't fix that! I work with these kids, I guide them through therapy, but I don't work miracles!"_

 _She was still staring at him, though, and the police woman smiled gently. "I understand, Ma'am, but… he's only five years old. He has nowhere else to go. Do you honestly think the foster system will be good for a boy that went through what he went through?"_

 _And that was that. Gray was given a room to share with the seven-year-old menace, Riley, that got there a couple of weeks before him who did not appreciate Gray moving in and taking up half of his breathing space._

 _Gray woke up, more than once, screaming at phantoms of men to leave his mom alone, to not touch Ur. His nightmares were so frequent that, within three days, every kid in the place had a vague idea of what happened to him. He tried to stop crying. It didn't work._

 _Riley was the one who got the greatest kick out of teasing him._

" _Hey, Gray, you still miss your mommy?"_

" _Does the little itty bitty cry baby need his mommy to tuck him into bed?"_

" _No! No. Not Ur! Don't touch her!"_

 _The last one was said in front of seven of the others about three weeks in while they sat in the garden waiting for the cook to finish lunch and come out to get them. They were left unsupervised for no longer than fifteen minutes. It was enough time for Riley to mock Gray for his nightly terrors._

 _He expected Gray to get angry again. He expected Gray to punch him so that he could hit him back without getting in trouble. He expected Gray to silently let the tears fall again and hide his face. He expected a lot of things. None of which happened._

 _Gray's face remained blank, impassive. He stood up and walked over to where Riley was sitting. Riley, anticipating a fight, stood up from his spot on the ground. Some girl tried to pull Riley back, but he flung her arm to the side violently. Gray's eyes followed the movement before returning to look directly up into Riley's eyes._

" _Do you know what I saw?" he asked, tonelessly, as if he'd just asked what color the sky was. Almost with a hint of cheerfulness that didn't quite make it past his lips._

 _Riley blinked a couple times before he could process it. "You saw your mommy die. Duh." He stretched out the syllables in the word 'mommy.'_

 _Gray nodded and Riley smirked, opening his mouth to laugh when Gray interrupted him._

" _Wanna know how it happened?"_

 _The kids in the circle shifted nervously, some hugging their legs, others twitching their fingers, a little boy with blonde hair tapping his foot. Gray's face still hadn't changed at all. No smile. No anger. Nothing. Riley wanted to say 'no' but he actually was curious what had the kid screaming every friggin' night and he couldn't lose face, not in front of everyone._

" _Sure," he replied, sounding much more confident than he felt._

 _Gray smiled, quick, short, before going back to that numb look that was freaking Riley out so much._

" _I was in the kitchen, helping her out. My brother was staying at a friend's. Sleepover, ya'know?" he starts. "So we're laughing and then there's this loud_ BANG," _he says. He looks at Riley expectantly. Riley nods. He goes on. "So she tells me to hide in the cupboard, the one where we keep the pasta and soup sauce, and I go in, right? She tells me that no matter what I have to be quiet. That she_ needs _me to be quiet."_

 _He stops, shakes his head, looks directly at Riley. "It's quiet. My mom is quiet. I hear the steps coming closer to the living room, someone walking down that long hallway. One step," he says, taking a step forward. Riley takes a step back. "Two steps." Another step forward that Riley imitates in reverse. Gray is staring directly into his eyes, pupils blown just a little wider, something in the irises flashing just a little darker._

" _He's right in front of her. I can see their feet through the thin cracks in the door. There's a loud sound, like what it sounds like when you swat a fly really hard against the wall to make sure it's dead," he states aloud, as if realizing the comparison for the first time. "And then I can see my mom on the floor. I can see his hands, tying her up. She's not moving. She told me to be quiet. She doesn't make a sound until he takes out a knife," He holds out his hand in Riley's direction, sticks out his arm, traces one finger along his chubby forearm. "A knife like that size, shiny." His eyes are locked in with Riley's whose expression is growing more and more restless by the second._

" _He drags it across her cheek. Slowly, enough to wake her up and for the screaming to start, but strong, so that the skin is coming off. Like one of those zombie movies we're not supposed to watch. She's screaming so much, trying to twist away and the knife goes deeper, cutting into her face enough for me to see a big hole in her cheek, teeth white and bright and bloody."_

 _So many of the kids look sick now. One of the smaller girls is crying. Gray doesn't notice them. Doesn't move a muscle in his face unless it's to form words for Riley to hear. Riley is fidgeting, but he can't look away. He can't say anything anymore._

" _We lived by the forest, so no one but me could hear her. But the blood cut off her voice, 'cause it was going down her throat. He turned her face up, see?" He stops to grip his own throat, ramming his jaw up forcefully to look at the sky before directing his gaze at Riley again. "She was turning red, then purple, then this really really light blue. Big hole on the side of her face was still leaking, close to the corner of her mouth so it looked like her lips were tied together with a little pink string. Like bubblegum."_

 _Gray takes another step forward, just a couple of inches in front of Riley's face. He's still not making any facial expression. He still looks like he's not feeling anything. Riley shivers._

" _Riley?" Gray asks._

" _Y-yeah?"_

" _Want to know why that guy killed my mom? What I heard him tell the police when they got there?"_

 _Riley swallows. "What?"_

" _He killed her because he didn't like her." He shrugs. Riley's face is one of shock and disbelief._

 _Out of the corner of his eye, Gray sees the cook heading toward the screen door to open it and let them in, so he tells Riley one last thing in front of everyone. "A guy killed my mom because he didn't like her," he says. He stares hard at Riley, looking him up and down before adding, "And I don't like_ **you.** " _The words alone sent chills down the spines of every kid there, but it was Gray's smirk at the end that made them fear for Riley._

 _That night the kids all avoided Gray during dinner and playtime. Gray woke up screaming again. Riley beat him up to wake him. He didn't stop when Gray's eyes shot open._

 _By morning, Riley had gone missing. The chef also lost his sharpest butcher knife._

 _The following night was the first night that Gray didn't have any nightmares._

 _No one ever found that seven-year-old kid._ _Most people forgot his name._

Gray smiled to himself as he turned up the radio in the car. Another rule he'd made for himself. Never use your own car.

He pulled into the marina, and started picking the lock to the cabin cruiser boat on the edge. Closest to the rest of the water, less shit to navigate through. He kept rotating the lock pad until he heard three distinctive clicks. In. This had always been so easy.

He left the chains swung around the post, not wanting the boat to drift away. He was not going into the water tonight no matter what and going through the hassle of picking another boat and guessing the code was not appealing to him.

Gray walked back down the dock's wooden bridge, into the lot and picked up his, what? Eight? Nine? black garbage bags and gripped them each in his fists. The duct tape was pulled on tight, there were no rocks in the bags to weigh the limbs down because in a few months, the bags would eventually tear if there were sharp or overly rough objects inside and the limbs would float to shore and one of his projects would be found, and then there'd be a man hunt and that was just unacceptable. He drifted over to the boat, throwing the plastic bags over the low railing, and gripping the bar to lunge himself over it. It was much more taxing to move his own limbs when he was wearing so many clothes, but he needed to keep them on in case anyone ever accessed the feeds of the dock cameras and saw him. He tugged the chain over its post, setting the boat free.

He dragged the bags over inside the cabin, the control area, and got to work hooking up his software. You could hack anything that had a battery with a phone if you knew what you were doing. Just as he started the engine and pulled out of the dock, he heard a groaning sound from one of the cabin rooms. No. No fucking way. It was two in the morning. No one should have been on this boat. He checked the feeds of the previous twelve hours. No one had gone in or out. Gray stopped the boat about a mile out in the water.

There was a moment where Gray held his breath. Then there was a slight rustling sound from beyond the door. Fuck this. He didn't even bring a weapon! It was supposed to be a quick drop off and then a drive home. Simple. Who the hell lived in a tiny cramped cabin boat? What was supposed to be a simple choice to deter suspicion, because no one suspected the man who drove a damn cabin boat of all things, was now the closest Gray had ever come to discovery. No one walked in on him during a disposal. It had never happened before. He was going to flay the person in that room.

Messy pink hair and tan skin opened the door and a man of average height came out rubbing his eyes, "Cana, what are you-" he started. He froze at the sight of a newly stripped Gray. Gray wasn't fighting with the stifling set of clothes he'd been wearing. He'd be a dead man.

"Who the _fuck-"_

Gray lunged at the man in the white scarf and landed over him, legs on either side of his torso, hands buried into the scarf, wrapped around a long tan neck, cutting off the flow of air. The man struggled and bucked up, pulling roughly at pale strong hands, but Gray was too experienced in this. He'd done it too many times and he was desperate now, the bags of separated limbs lay scattered on the floor. He was not taking goddamn chances.

Light green eyes glared at him, even as that face drained of color, even as the hands clawing at Gray's lost more and more of their strength.

After what Gray felt was an eternity, those tan hands went limp and he let the soft flesh go. He stared at the man. He felt for a pulse, steady, unconscious. So he lived. Gray hadn't been planning on starting a new project so soon, but he couldn't let this man get away now. He'd seen his face. He'd felt Gray wrap his hands around his neck until he passed out.

Speaking of that, Gray looked at the skin on the man's throat. Huh. The red marks were already fading. No bruising. Gray studied the limp body on the floor. Still pumping blood. Still breathing. No bruising. Cute, even. He lifted the corner of the stranger's upper lip, pretty white teeth. He was wearing sweats and the edge of his boxers peaked out from under them. He didn't have stubble like some of the men Gray saw making nasty little fashion statements that didn't go with their faces at all. He seems to have good hygiene, despite living in this dump apparently. Gray laid a hand against the man's abdomen. Solid muscle. Soft skin. Perfect. Gray let himself smile. It wasn't like anyone would see it. He was just excited. _How long will it take to break this one?_ His hand trailed over that chest, that throat, those pretty pink lips.

He rolled his eyes at his own antics. Even after everything he'd done, he'd never crossed that line. Not with a project. That would be stupid. Might weaken him. Make him merciful. He stood.

He restarted the engine and drove out, checked the fuel, went forty-five miles out, and threw the bags overboard. He turned the boat back and pulled back into the marina in just over an hour and a half. He had to get the hell out of here. Some of the early risers liked to fish at four in the morning and he had about twenty minutes to leave before they started coming in.

He pulled on his pile of clothes, crouching below the sight level of the window to keep out of the camera's view, pulling on his baseball cap to hide his face. He turned to Pinky, still out of commission. He sighed. If the man lived here, and got regular visits from some woman called 'Cana,' then the cops would look into his case anyway. It wasn't Gray's usual, but he couldn't resist, not after he saw that his grip left no marks, not after wondering how far he'd have to go to mark this one.

He pulled the pink-haired man into his arms, bridal style. It might delay any investigation if it looked like he'd been caring for a passed out drunk friend. He jumped over the railing, down onto the dock bridge. Cradling the man close, he walked to the van. He'd have to get rid of it soon enough. The camera in the lot had gotten a decent image of it for sure and he didn't have time to follow the IP address receiving the signal and delete the memory on it because he had to get his newest toy out of sight. He opened the side door, laying the man in the back, pulling out an anesthetic from his glove box for good measure. He needed the man to sleep for a little while longer. He drove off.

He had to admit, he was slightly intrigued. No one had ever taken one look at him, even in their own territory, and immediately reacted by furiously cursing and demanding to know who he was before. Especially not when he was mostly nude. Women typically blushed and asked his name before he moved forward, smirking and watching their eyes widen in horror. Men would either react in a similar manner or shut their eyes and assume someone had sent them a gay hooker as a joke, swearing up and down that they were straight before he lunged forward and took them out, watching the expression of fury turn to confusion and panic.

Two things happened differently with the rosette. One, Gray hadn't _planned_ to attack him because he wasn't _aware of his presence._ Two, the guy had confronted Gray in the blink of an eye, going into defensive mode as a default without considering any other option.

Either Pinky was a paranoid _idiot_ , which Gray highly doubted because the man woke to realize his boat was moving and just assumed a friend had let herself in.

Or. Pinky was afraid of someone. Or something. Gray wanted to know what. He wanted to know what made Pinky so instinctively furious and teach him that nothing he ever experienced could be _worse_ than being the newest project of Gray Fullbuster. _Nothing._


	2. Long Lost And Forgotten

He felt awake, but his eyelids felt heavy when he tried to open them. Did he get that drunk? Ugh. Cana. It was always Cana, bringing him booze knowing he was nauseous enough on the rocking boat as it was and he was technically breaking the law by drinking it anyway. Eighteen year olds weren't supposed to drink so much that their heads pounded in the morning and their eyelids felt like they were weighed down by lead. Not in the U.S.

He felt groggy, exhausted, a little like he wanted to throw up but that was the usual on the boat. Eight years and he still wasn't used to the rocking motions that he always woke up to-

Wait. He didn't feel any rocking motions. And his arms and legs were strapped down by-

His eyes shot open. His vision blurred, like he was looking at everything through a fog. A blurry figure stood beside him, looming over him. The fog was thinning slowly. A blurry smile.

"You're awake. Finally." The voice sounded impatient, a little irritated, but there was a note of excitement underneath that had him tremble with fury. _Excitement. It was always excitement in their voices._

He focused on the man's face. "So they sent you to get me? Finally found me again? Took you people long enough." It had taken him ten years to finally feel like he was safe, to finally think about getting an actual job. He'd been alone and afraid, and stealing to survive for the first couple years before Cana caught him and offered to help. She'd stolen the key to her father's boat, the one he never used anymore, and Natsu had gotten off the streets. He owed her his life and when she'd insisted he take his drawings to the tattoo shop and apply, he'd given in after the first couple tries. He should've known it would lead them straight to him. He should've known to keep his face out of any and all surveillance cameras, the way he made sure to at the docks. He should have realized that living a normal life was never going to be a possibility for him. They had run him out of towns before and now they'd finally caught up to him. They always did.

The man's eyes narrowed, his jaw tight. Natsu mistook the look for one of anger and goaded him more.

"I mean, you couldn't keep me locked up when I was eight, what makes you think," he chuckled roughly, "that you won't lose me now?" He grinned sloppily.

He waited for the needle to go into his skin, the inevitable appearance of a syringe, for the piercing stab of a scalpel. He was so ready for any of the familiar sensations that the fast punch to his face and the blood dripping to the side from his nose took a second to register.

Then he was coughing up the blood that seeped from his nostrils down to his mouth and trying to breathe, the pain of the back of his head slamming against the metal surface he laid on ringing in his ears.

He coughed one more time, panted through his mouth, spitting red liquid in the man's general direction. "What," pant, "the _fuck."_

The man sighed, far too loudly in Natsu's opinion, and stepped a little closer. It wasn't like Natsu could _move._ Suddenly his hand shot out and yanked Natsu's hair toward him so their faces were about six inches apart, Natsu's neck straining with the movement, his chest strapped down to the table, a yelp caught in his throat. They weren't this physical. They didn't touch their patients. They liked to watch the agony from behind clear glass panels.

"I don't think you understand the situation you're in," the man told him quietly. "You see," he began, speaking softly and precisely, bringing up his other hand, a hand that held a medium-sized blade with a black handle, silver carvings, "Whoever had you before, whoever made you afraid…" he smiled, full and wide and gleeful, "They're lovely people compared to me."

He took the knife and slammed it down into Natsu's torso, snapping a rib, the horrible sound of a split bone echoing against the pale grey walls.

Natsu had realized this man was not with them. He realized he was just _unlucky_ enough to catch the attention of just _another_ type of monster.

He'd thought he'd get a few days of torture. He'd assumed the man would get a rush out of electrocuting him or something, maybe carving him up like those men had carved up that woman in his hometown, or maybe burn his skin, make his flesh look like the scars on Igneel's arms, the one's Natsu had seen as a kid. He'd thought he could bear the pain, hold out, and wait for a chance to escape, since the man had to leave at some point, had to eat or sleep or pretend to be a normal person in society. He'd foolishly thought he could make it.

Now, with his mouth wide open and gasping, the sensation of feeling his chest shatter under the skin, the needles stabbing the inside of his lungs with each breath, the tears seeping out against his will, a scream caught on his tongue that wouldn't form, pain so red and burning on the inside so furiously that he couldn't say a word, blood still leaking from his nose, he realized that he probably didn't have that long.

He was going to die here, a knife stuck in his ribs, a smirking stranger watching, enthralled by the sight.

Natsu's wide eyes locked on his, breathing erratic and loud in the cold sterilized room. The last face he would see, he thought. Strange. Now that his vision was fading, he thought the man was quite beautiful, the lights from the ceiling highlighting perfect alabaster skin, dark spiked hair, and dark blue eyes, midnight, that looked… so familiar, somehow.

A smiling young face flashed in Natsu's mind. A ghost of a memory. A glimmer of recognition long lost and forgotten in the terror of daily life.

Natsu's eyes were drifting shut, the fog returning full-force, the man before him fading into the blur he'd woken up to, one word slipping out of blood-stained pink lips.

"Gray…."


	3. I'll Never Forget You

_A small boy wrung his hands together nervously. He wanted to hold his dad's hand, but he knew he was going to meet all the other kids today and he didn't want to look scared. Igneel had a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he saw the conflict on Natsu's face. He reached out his hand and held onto small chubby tan fingers. Natsu's eyes widened and he tried to pull away, but Igneel held on tight and shook his head._

" _But-!" the protest began._

" _Just tell them I'm overprotective and I was nervous to leave you on your first day," Igneel instructed him. He actually was a little nervous, but Natsu didn't need to know that Igneel ever felt nervous. To Natsu, he was big and strong and Igneel wanted things to stay that way for as long as possible._

 _Natsu bit his lower lip, but nodded and held Igneel's hand tight._

 _Once they reached the classroom door, wide open, Natsu made a choice. He didn't want to be a liar, so he tugged on Igneel's sleeve. Igneel looked down at him, face stoic other than the tiny upturn of lips._

" _Natsu?"_

 _Natsu looked up at him with wide green eyes and used his hand to motion that Igneel should come closer. Igneel stepped down on one knee, at eye level with Natsu, when Natsu swung chubby little arms around his neck tight and hugged him. Igneel sputtered a bit off balance at the unexpected show of affection, and tentatively hugged back. Natsu hadn't wanted to appear scared and here he was hugging the life out of him in front of everyone._

" _What are you doing, kiddo?" he asked quietly, his own arms hugging Natsu close despite his resolve to appear strong for the kid._

 _Natsu arms tightened around him and the boy shook his head slightly. "I didn't want to lie about you, Daddy. You're not overpa-... overpart-," he pulled back, his brow furrowed in frustration before he shouted, "Opervetentive!"_

 _Igneel laughed. "Overprotective?" he inquired in an amused voice._

 _Natsu nodded vigorously, eyes bright and awed at Igneel's ease with words. "Yeah, that thing!" Natsu probably didn't know what the word meant and assumed it was some kind of insult to Igneel's name when it was just a description that suited most parents with only one child on the first day of school. Igneel ruffled his hair and the little boy pouted._

" _I'll pick you up when school's out, okay?"_

 _Natsu grinned brightly and stood up a little straighter. "'Kay!" he said._

 _When Igneel stood and walked away, Natsu turned around to see that all of the kids were watching him, a few laughing. He puffed out his chest and said, "Hi!" waving his hand out in front of him cheekily, "My name is Natsu."_

 _The teacher was just outside reassuring the mother of one of the girls and wasn't there to mediate the introductions._

" _Are you a Daddy's boy?" one of the taller girls asked him._

" _What do you mean?" he asked, confused. Didn't everyone have a dad?_

 _His response caused a series of chuckles among the closest group of kids and Natsu clenched little fists in offense._

" _He's just mad because his_ Daddy _is overprotective," snickered a boy from the left. Just as Igneel had thought, Natsu didn't know what the word meant and his reaction was far out of proportion._

 _He snarled out the words, "Igneel isn't overpa-," he gritted his teeth angrily, "Don't talk about Igneel!"_

 _The boy laughed at him and Natsu, being an energetic and impulsive little thing, brought his fist back and swung, clocking the kid's jaw, sending him stumbling back into the rack of crayons and paint. The teacher walked in just in time to see the kid fall back and knock over her precious art supplies as Natsu grinned widely in satisfaction. There was a phone call home, which considering the incident happened within the first five minutes of class meant that no one was home yet to answer anyway so_ the joke's on you, lady, _and Natsu was forced to sit at the back of the class away from the others and by a kid who was sitting alone before Natsu came in._

 _The teacher tried to coax the boy forward with the others who were in the middle of introductions, but the boy stuck his tongue out at her and that was that._

 _Natsu plopped into the chair beside him. They'd been a couple of seats apart, but if the kid wasn't going to join the others, Natsu didn't see why both of them had to be alone and bored for the rest of the day. The boy turned his head to glare at him, eyebrows drawn down in an angry expression._

 _Natsu took no heed of the look, smiling and saying, "Hey."_

" _If you're going to make fun of me, you can leave," the boy informed him crisply._

 _Natsu frowned. "Why would I make fun of you?" he asked._

" _Because I hugged Ur and Lyon didn't," he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, his voice dropping down as he muttered, "Everyone else thought it was funny."_

 _Natsu didn't think it was funny. He wished he had a mom too. The other kids had moms. He'd hug his mom tight and never let go if he had one. He turned to the front of the room where the others were gathered in a circle._

" _Hey!" he shouted, waiting until most of them turned his way and the teacher's eyes widened in dread, standing on his chair and yelling out, "You're all_ meanies _and I don't like you!"_

" _Sit down, Natsu! Don't make me call your father again," the teacher called out, face red and eyes narrowed. Natsu rolled his eyes and sat down, making a big tada motion with his hands._

 _The teacher nodded curtly and turned her attention back to the kids in the circle._

 _Natsu turned to the boy beside him, grinning madly, before it faded at the sight of the glare he was receiving. "What?"_

" _I can do things by myself. I don't need a boy with pink hair to stick up for me," the dark-haired boy gritted out._

" _It's not pink! Igneel said it's saaa-munn!" Natsu told him._

" _Whatever. If I wanted to yell at them, I would," he said._

 _Natsu cocked his head a little to the left. "So why didn't you?"_

 _The boy glared harder and whispered harshly, "Because we have to get along with them for the rest of the year, stupid."_

 _Natsu shook his head, "No, we don't, baka."_

 _Said idiot's face blanked out in confusion, before the glare returned with less animosity._

" _Yes, we do," he assured him._

 _Natsu just smiled. "Nuh-uh," he grabbed the boy's hand and held it tightly with a bright smile, "I can just talk to you 'n you can talk to me. We don't have to be with the meanies."_

 _The kid's face flushed pink but he stuttered out, "L-like friends?"_

 _Natsu smiled wider, green eyes alight, nodding. "Igneel said that if I made good friends, I could call them my 'nakama'."_

" _Nakama?" the boy asked, hand still cold in Natsu's warm grip._

" _Yeah, like, family."_

 _Dark eyes widened in shock, "But I don't have any friends."_

 _Natsu threw an eraser shaving at him. The kid glared. "What was that for?"_

"I'm _your friend," he stressed._

" _O-oh. Right. Okay." He nodded. Natsu's face lit up like a christmas tree._

 _They spent the rest of the school day drawing, talking, and blatantly ignoring the other kids and the teacher, something that earned them several calls home, but surely Igneel and Ur would be more understanding than the mean woman who kept bothering them all day._

 _When Igneel came to pick up Natsu and was held up at the door talking to a very angry teacher, Natsu took the opportunity to say goodbye to his new friend, the second member of his 'nakama,' the first being Igneel, of course._

" _Igneel is here, so I think I'm going home," he told him sadly, lower lip jutting out a bit. It was funny that he'd been so scared earlier. He'd had a lot of fun and Igneel had been right about making friends, or one friend. He wasn't interested in the others. If they said sorry to Igneel he might talk to them, but with how they acted so far they weren't getting so much as a smile from him._

 _The kid nodded silently and smiled shyly._

 _Natsu suddenly crashed into him hugging him, making a stunned look creep onto his red face. Natsu pulled away and asked, "Hey, what's your name? You didn't tell me!"_

 _The kid stared into bright green eyes and 'saaa-munn' strands of hair and replied, "Gray. My name is Gray."_

" _Natsu! We have to get going!" called Igneel._

 _Natsu turned and shouted out, "Wait, Daddy! I'm saying bye to my nakama!"_

 _Igneel's face, previously stern and stoic, softened and his eyes had a shine of tenderness in them as he took in the two boys._

 _Natsu held both of Gray's hands. "You won't forget me before tomorrow, right?"_

 _Gray shook his head rapidly, overwhelmed at so much physical contact, "What? No!"_

 _There was no way he could forget the boy that had stood on a chair in front of the whole class to defend him against the meanies. Ur would like Natsu. Natsu didn't seem reassured though._

 _His hands squeezed tighter as he asked, "You promise? Promise you'll never forget me?"_

 _Gray nodded and smiled with more than a little embarrassment when he saw Ur at the door by Igneel. "I promise," he whispered._

 _Natsu hugged him again, tighter._

" _Natsu!" Igneel reprimanded._

" _Coming!" Natsu shouted, voice a little too close to Gray's ear and making him wince._

 _Natsu let him go and said, "I'll never forget you either, Gray," with a wide smile before holding out his pinky._

" _Nakama?" he asked._

 _Gray felt his heart beating loudly in his ears as he intertwined his pinky with Natsu's._

" _Nakama," he agreed._

 _Natsu grinned at him one last time before letting go and running after Igneel. Gray smiled. Natsu was his first friend. He swept one last glance around the kids in the room waiting to get picked up as he made his way to Ur. He didn't think he needed any friends other than Natsu. He didn't want any friends other than Natsu. Nakama. He could get used to the word. Although he did feel that Natsu was being a little silly. Forget him? Gray would never do that. No matter what._


	4. Interlocking Fingers And Promises

Gray stared at the unconscious body laid out on his table. His hands were trembling, he was sweating, his legs were shaking. He gripped the edge of the table. No. He'd remember meeting someone with pink freaking hair. He couldn't know his name. Impossible. He jerked his hand into pink locks, ramming the guy up forcefully.

"How do you know my name?" he screamed out. His breathing was ragged. He'd been enjoying the stream of blood and then this man went and said his name, ruined his experience. He dangled limply in Gray's hold. No response.

Gray swung both legs over the man's torso, fists drawing back to punch him, one hit after another. "Wake up! Wake up, you _waste of air!"_ Gray threaded his hands through his hair, pulling frustratedly, lost. The man wasn't waking up, just taking his punches like a sack of vegetables and Gray's arms shook with the urge to strangle him. That tan neck was there, blood adorning it in such a bright shade of red just calling to him. Calling for him to wrap his hands around it and close it off.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tried to calm his racing heart. No. He needed his projects to last longer than this. He needed to keep the nightmares at bay. Of Ur. Of… what came afterwards. He needed this. The longer he drew this out, the longer he could sleep. He just wanted to sleep. He'd learned to enjoy this, the rush in his veins better than any drug when he heard the screaming, saw the bleeding, heard the ragged breaths and saw the looks on their faces. That feeling had just started and then his captive uttered his name and Gray couldn't handle it. Suddenly it had felt like the ground was being torn out from under him, making him lose his balance and flail around desperately, no _control._ He hadn't lost control this easily in years. Not since he was nine. He fisted his hands at his sides, letting them fall limply.

He sat there over his new project, staring, trying to figure him out. His breathing was even in his sleep. The blood on his face was dripping to the side, slowly, no longer a stream. It gave Gray pause. It wasn't… right. The nose had been broken recently. Without any cleaning to the nasal passage it should still be bleeding and yet… it wasn't. He reached out his hand, pale fingers brushed over the bridge of the man's nose, pressing softly. Gray's eyes widened. The cartilage. It wasn't damaged. He shook his head in awe, in shock. It had been damaged a few minutes ago, otherwise it wouldn't have been bleeding. The cartilage had _healed._ On its own. In under five minutes.

Gray let his hand trail down that tan neck. He remembered the abnormality he'd seen on the boat, the final reason he hadn't been able to leave this one behind. No bruising. He gripped the handle of the knife, still buried into the area through the lowest rib. He'd shoved it in at an angle that avoided all major organs. He didn't want his project to die so soon and he'd assumed he'd have to treat the wound in preparation for new ones. He kept it there for a moment, then pulled it out quickly, the blood coming out in a shower with it, oozing out slowly from the wound instead of gushing out like a river, the way it _should_ be. Gray watched the cut on the skin, the space around it, waiting for a visible change. The bleeding stopped. Gray wiped away the red liquid with his sleeve, eyes rapt and unblinking. A thin white line became visible between the two sides of the gash, fading into tan skin slowly, until it was nearly the same shade. His fingers trailed softly over it, tentatively, and he pressed down on the area, searching for any sign of internal bleeding, of the bruising that should be appearing, of the fracture in the bone that he heard clearly snapping earlier. Nothing. Nothing but a thin line of lighter tan skin where there should be a hideous scar and the purple hues that signaled a broken rib.

Gray bit the corner of his lower lip, a thin trail of his own blood making it down to his jaw before he smiled, eyes shining and wild in the light. He pushed off of his project, feet touching the ground, and walked over to the drawers latched onto the wall on the other side of the room. He opened the third drawer from the bottom. For this one, he'd have to use something _special._

He took out a syringe, a needle, a small cylindrical jar with a black screwed-on cap. He twisted it open, slid the needle into place in the syringe, drew the handle of the syringe back, drawing up the transparent liquid. He'd broken into the hospital for this fluid. He could hear his own pulse in his head, loud and fast and much too excited. Breathed in to calm himself. He'd been saving this for a special occasion, a stronger project. What better project than one that couldn't remain wounded for very long? _How long will it take to break this one?_

He turned back to the rosette, syringe in hand, ready. He held the man's arm down on the table as he looked for the vein. Not there. A little to the left. He felt a small rise under the skin. His eyes locked onto the area as he inserted the needle, pushed down on the handle with his thumb, saw the clear substance disappear into tan skin. He breathed out. He had to hurry. He didn't have much time before the effects would wear off. Fifteen minutes maybe.

He released the locks on the restraints holding the man down. Took out a box from under the table. Six inch nails. Steel. A hammer. He hauled the man up against a wall, pinned his arm flat against the surface, palm facing him. Still unconscious. Not for long.

Gray pressed his side against the man's torso to hold him up, held the first nail against his forearm. Gripped the hammer, lined it up. Swung.

A scream and the echo of the impact pierced the silence. Gray smiled, took one step back to look at the man who hung limply from the point where his forearm was hooked to the wall, his shoulder popping outward at what was likely a painful angle, straining to support his weight. Green eyes were wide open and had a tinge of red in the whites of them as they looked around frantically, locking onto Gray.

In one swift movement, Gray took another nail, pinned up the man's other arm to the side, and slammed the nail down into the flesh, the spatter of blood and the scream causing a rush of adrenaline in his bloodstream. He smiled, dark and wide, and the man stared at him, a stare filled with so much pain and shock that Gray had to remind himself what he'd woken him up so soon for.

"What did you do to me?" the man asked, voice raw and dry.

Gray pulled out another nail, held it out, sharp edge a centimeter from a wide green eye. His smile remained. "Everybody knows hospitals use anesthetics to knock people out during surgery," Gray tells him, smirking as he notices that Natsu isn't paying attention to the nail that's so close to his iris, watching Gray's face instead. So _brave._ "What they don't know," Gray continues, moving the nail back and placing it against the inside of the man's elbow, imbedding the sharp end in the skin and watching the man wince as a trickle of blood seeps out, "Is that the doctors also use another drug, to make sure the patient can't move in their sleep and disrupt the procedure."

He lined up the hammer, looked into narrowed green eyes, swung. A shrill cry echoed in the space. Gray felt his heart beating a little faster. The man's head hung low against his chest, his breaths rough and loud.

"Cisatracurium," Gray continued in a cheerful tone, pulling out another nail, beginning the same process on the other arm, "Commonly known as Nimbex," he slammed down the hammer, reveled in the latest sound of agony, "blocks the signals from the nerves to the muscles." Another nail slammed into the man's bicep, thin trails of red dripped onto the floor, but Gray didn't worry, he hadn't hit any major arteries. The man would be fine. For now. He lined another nail up against the other bicep, slammed it down, shouted over the man's cries, "Basically!" he pounded on a nail three times so it would stick into the center of the man's palm, "It's supposed to go with anesthesia."

"Yeah?" the man panted out, wheezing, tears trailing down the sides of his face as he glared at Gray, finally collecting himself enough to speak again, "And where's that?"

The sarcasm made Gray chuckle. He _liked_ this one. All sarcasm and heated glares when he was completely defenseless. "Didn't have any in stock," he replied, slamming down another nail into the other palm. He frowned when the man didn't cry out again, just gritted his teeth and let out a rumbling growl.

He leaned in, just out of reach of the man's face, after all the muscle inhibitors could wear off and they only worked from the neck down, but enough to whisper in his ear, "You can't move. But I didn't give you anything to keep you unconscious, so… you can feel…" he brought one last nail out, placed it right over the area that hadn't remained broken like it should have, " _everything."_ He slammed the nail in and the man's eyes went wide, his breathing labored, and Gray stepped back to admire the view. There were nails all along those arms, straight out at his sides like a cross, feet hanging just above the ground, almost touching it but not quite reaching it. Lovely. His fingers were already twitching and Gray felt his irritation rising. The effects of a small dosage should have lasted twice as long. The man shouldn't have been regaining muscle movement so soon. He sped up his plans.

"So," he started, voice nonchalant, "How did you know my name?" He stepped back, crossed his arms expectantly.

The man stared at the ground, hair falling over his face, foot twitching. He mumbled something inaudibly.

Gray shot forward his arm, tangled his fingers in light pink hair and yanked it back to force the man to look him in the eye. "Speak. Clearly," Gray bit out.

Light green eyes watered as they locked on Gray's and he found his grip on the light-colored strands slackening instinctively. He tightened his hold stubbornly, waving away the strange impulse to let go. He wanted answers.

Blood-stained lips opened and said one word. "Nakama." The word was quiet and broken, but Gray heard it and he stumbled back and _stared._

In the lighting, he took in the color of the man's skin, the hint of sharp canines he could see when the man spoke, the strands of hair that weren't a dark or pastel shade of pink. They were _salmon._ He hadn't seen salmon-colored hair or heard that word since before everything happened with Lyon. Since before the nightmares. Since before Ur. Since…

His eyes stung and he felt a light liquid treading softly down his own face as he looked over the body nailed onto his wall, the face staring back at him waiting for realization to hit. Waiting for a sign of recognition even as he hung limply and lost blood. His throat closed up. His limbs were shaking. His breathing erratic. His heart crashing against his ribs. A memory of interlocking fingers and promises from long ago.

"Natsu…?"

A fragile smile and then a white burning pain searing away all he could see.


	5. The Nightmares

Gray dropped to his knees, bent over, hands in his hair yanking at it in continuously frantic movements, eyes wide and unseeing.

Natsu stared, chest hyperventilating at the sight of him in pain.

"Gray?" he asked. No response.

Gray was lost in visions from the time he'd lost the last of his family, not seeing the man crucified on his wall as he twitched, body breaking down more of the drugs, as he called and yelled for him, shouting his name in concern in desperation.

" _It's your fault she died," he said, sneering at him._

"No! She told me to be quiet! She said-"

"Gray, what-"

" _You stayed quiet as they cut off her skin. You killed her!"_

"I didn't! I didn't kill her!" Gray cried, "I didn't, I didn't, I didn't-"

"Okay, I get it, you didn't kill her," Natsu said, trying to be soothing even as Gray crouched on the ground, strands of hair pulled tight from his reddening scalp.

" _Murderer!"_

"I didn't want to be, Lyon! I didn't," he screamed out, tears leaking from his eyes, lost in his visions of the past as Natsu felt his limbs regain some function, enough for him to propel his legs forward only for the nails digging in his skin to force a shrill cry to tear from his throat as they dug deeper in his skin, in his body. Still he tried to get to Gray.

"I know you didn't want to, Gray. I believe you. Okay?" he tried to tell him, tried to get him to look at him. Gray was shaking on the floor. He was too far gone.

" _She would still be here, if you had done something. Anything! You did nothing!" Lyon screamed at him. Gray had managed to get a note to him in school, told him to sneak out at night and that he'd meet him at the park on the edge of the woods that Ur used to take them to. He'd thought maybe Lyon missed him too, that maybe he felt alone too. He didn't think Lyon would blame him, scream out the words that would bring back the nightmares._

Gray had been reduced to whimpers as his eyes clamped shut and Natsu struggled against the nails that tore through his arms, pulling forward with everything he had through the blinding pain, forcing the nails in deeper and making his blood leak out faster, a thick puddle at his feet.

"Gray, snap out of it!" he yelled, but Gray only curled in on himself further, rocking forward, fingernails raking at the skin of his arms, tearing at his own flesh and Natsu continued trying to fling his shaking arms forward, the nails in so deep that the ends of them now looked like the tips of piercings along the front of his skin, straining his limbs even as he pushed forward, agonized screaming as he tried to reach Gray, to stop him from hurting himself.

"Lyon, I didn't want to," Gray whispered, voice caught in his own throat, high pitched and nearly a whine as his memories played out in his head, his hands scratching away at his clavicle and arms.

" _You didn't want to what? Be completely useless?" Lyon shoved Gray back into the gates of the park. "You killed Ur!" he shouted, swinging his fist at Gray's jaw, knocking him to the ground, his head slamming against the thin metal cylinder at the center of the fence._

" _I didn't-" Gray choked out, vision blurred in a translucent haze as the hits rained down on him, punches and kicks that had him holding his arms out in front of his head to stop them. 'Stop. Please, stop. Please don't bring back the nightmares.'_

"Stop, Lyon!" The choked out pleading made Natsu freeze because Gray sounded so goddamn broken it _hurt._ _What happened to you while I was gone?_ Gray let out a pained cry and he was holding out his arms in front of himself, backing away from an imaginary attacker and Natsu felt his blood boiling, the thought of someone hurting the reserved boy he'd known, his _nakama,_ making him tremble in fury. Someone had turned his nakama into a monster. _Lyon._

 _Lyon fisted a hand in Gray's hair, slamming his head against the fence hard enough for a dazed look to enter his eye through the desperation, before they filled with horror, memories of the skin peeling away playing through his head, the flesh, the nightmares, all returning as Lyon kicked at his ribs and Gray heard one cracking beneath the skin more than he felt it, the bruising already starting to show. One last flash of horror across dark irises and then a wide smile far too sinister for a child's innocent features. Lyon's movements stuttered at the sight, and then Gray gripped thin white locks of hair and slammed his head against the fence, bringing the rest of his body after it. Lyon punched him again in the jaw, but while his previous hits had dazed Gray, this hit did nothing but widen that malevolent elated smile._

The screaming, the tears, the whimpers, and the self-harm had frightened Natsu enough. The sudden halt of it all put him even more on edge. Gray was sitting there, gashes on his arms, over his collarbones, bright trails of red littering his body as they dripped on the floor around him, staring wide-eyed at his hands, a slow smile stretching across his face, broad and ominous.

 _Gray shot out his hand to grip the fist that clocked his jaw, eyes shining brightly under the park lights, held it tightly, and slammed it down against the metal cylinder, the angle causing something to snap, the ivory white edge of a broken bone tearing out of the wrist, red flooding out of the wound as an ear-piercing scream rang out against the trees. Too bad no one was around to hear it. Lyon's eyes latched onto the sight of that smile, heart pounding an unsteady beat that rung out through his veins, breathing irregular as fear poured out of him in waves that matched the speed of his blood dropping on the concrete. He tried to pull away, to twist to the side, but Gray knocked his head into the cylinder again, making the pain ring out in his head, straddling him and getting a mischievous look in his eye just as his hand let go of Lyon's hair, latched onto the exposed bone and yanked it toward himself, the skin tearing all the way down to his elbow, the bone popping off at the joint as Gray slammed it against the fence, giving Lyon no time to breathe, no time to react, no time to recognize the tears falling freely from his own eyes, no time to comprehend that the blood-curdling scream that slashed at the air around them had emanated from his own throat, that he was still screaming, mouth open and stretched out horrendously wide._

Gray's smile had grown impossibly wider and Natsu tugged harder against the nails. There were now holes littering his skin where the nails had sunk in, and he could feel them tearing at his cells on the inside as he inched further away from the wall, the nails still stuck to it even as Natsu shoved forward, bringing his feet up with his abdomen and kicking at the wall behind him to gain some leverage, some strength to push off of, gritted teeth and limbs going white with the strain. He _would_ get off the wall even if he lost his arms doing it. He wouldn't let Gray get lost in whatever scene was playing out in his head, he wouldn't let him become the monster he'd seen just when he'd managed to see recognition flashing in the midnight depths he'd come to know as a child.

 _Lyon was going to die. There was too much blood, pouring out too fast and his pale skin was turning a ghostly shade with the effort his screaming took. But Gray was past the point of caring. He held a new ivory length in his palm, grinning madly as he waved it in front of terror-filled eyes, the droplets of blood falling slowly down the white expanse of bone._

" _Isn't it pretty, Lyon?" came the jubilant question. Lyon tried to make out the individual features of Gray's face, but everything was blurring into vague forms before his eyes._

 _Gray laughed, brightly, delightedly, and the laugh echoed through the park, across the concrete, through the swings under the dark of night, over the trees and into the forest. He tossed the bone behind him and gripped Lyon's hair again, splotches of red spreading in the white strands, dragging him up against the fence like a rag doll, wrapping the chain that dangled from the fence to keep it locked around his neck. Pulled. Lyon went limp within a minute, eyes drifting shut, Gray's smile the last thing he could see, and Gray wondered if it was the loss of air that killed him, or the blood that stained the pavement. Small, pale hands let go of the chain and watched the body crash down, one arm falling at an awkward angle without the bone to support it. He unwrapped the metal from white, bloodless skin and admired the view. Even dead, bodies still showed bruises in dark shades of blue with lines of purple and faded red._

 _He used his sleeve to wipe at the chain. The girl cop that had been on Ur's case had said something about 'fingerprints' and 'identification.' Gray had found the words in the dictionary at the children's trauma recovery home and the implications of their meanings didn't sit well with him. He had to be careful about leaving these so-called 'prints' behind._

 _He brushed a hand through Lyon's hair. "We had a lot of fun together, didn't we, Lyon?" he asked. He frowned a bit, "You brought back the nightmares," he said, tightening his grip angrily, "Calling me a murderer," he scoffed. "But you helped them go away again, so it's okay," he said, smiling softly, "I forgive you." He brushed the hair out of Lyon's face._

 _He stood slowly, walking back over to the bone on the pavement. He picked it up, holding it across both palms almost reverently, the way royalty held swords to present them to crowds, symbols of the ordeals they and their country had survived. "I'm going to keep this okay?" he asked, "I mean, you don't mind right? 'Cause you don't need it anymore." He giggled. "It'll be my way of remembering you," he whispered, tucking the ivory length into the hem of his pants. He would have to find a place to hide it, wash the stains out of his clothes in the river, and sneak into the 'home' before the others woke up. Still, he let his smile stay on his face as he glanced at Lyon on the floor, limp against the fence. He didn't think he'd have nightmares again for a while. That first kid had kept them away for three weeks._

 _The next time the nightmares came was a month later. They no longer starred Ur. They centered around the horrors of the things he'd done to Lyon, but Gray was trapped inside his own head, unable to stop the scene as it played out, unable to stop his hands from hurting Lyon. The following night he had the nightmares again… but this time it was his hands that gripped a long shiny knife that carved into Ur as he desperately tried to stop himself, her skin flaying off slowly, her screams tearing at his sanity._

Gray's smile faded and his hair dropped over his eyes, water droplets falling slowly to the floor as his arms dropped at his sides and he knelt there, seven feet away from Natsu and facing his direction. Natsu kicked off of the wall one last time and, despite the cry that tore from his throat and the blood that dripped from the nails as they remained in their position on the wall, he finally fell free, thin holes of dark red and purple fading bruises adorning his arms and torso where the nails had ripped through the flesh. He fell to his knees on the ground, arms swinging at his sides numbly due to the pain as he inched forward to a silently crying Gray. He threw his body forward with one last painful exertion, chest crashing into Gray's, head laying on Gray's scratched up shoulder. Gray froze against him.

Natsu panted with the strain of the effort and he forced his throat to form the words, "It's not your fault, Gray. You don't have to be a murderer." Gray had gone through something horrible, something that still brought flashbacks apparently, but he could overcome this. Natsu could help him. They were _nakama._ Gray had been someone precious to him, and Natsu would never leave his nakama to suffer. Not like this.

Gray's eyes widened when a tan chest collided against his. Through the thin fog of tears he could see salmon locks of hair as Natsu's head rested on his shoulder. Murderer. Natsu said something about a murderer. Natsu had smiled at him and the memories had come flooding back. It had been years since he'd had any flashes while awake. He wrapped cold pale arms around broad weakened shoulders. He felt Natsu smile softly against the torn skin of his shoulder. Gray held him against his chest for a little longer. Natsu had withstood the pain from the crucifixion enough to lunge himself right through the nails even as they remained bloody on the wall. The thin holes in his arms and rib were probably already healing slowly. Gray smiled, full and vindictive.

"You brought back the nightmares," he said softly.

Natsu pulled back from his hold in confusion. "What?" he asked.

Gray's smile didn't falter. He swung his fist up into Natsu's chin, sending him collapsing backward on the ground. He stood quickly, aligning his foot under Natsu's jaw, cutting off his airway, knowing the man wouldn't be able to lift his arms quite yet after the ordeal he'd put himself through. "You brought back the nightmares," Gray repeated, voice steady, "But that's okay," he went on, pressing his foot down harder as Natsu choked beneath it, eyes wide and searching. "Because we're going to have fun, aren't we?" he asked, smile so bright it was blinding.

"You'll help me out right?" he asked as Natsu saw his vision blackening on the edges. Gray's voice was tender and soft when he added, "We're _nakama,_ after all."


	6. I Can't Stop

Gray walked into the room. He hadn't fed Natsu in about a day. He clutched the bag of take out at his side. Laid it on Natsu's lap.

Natsu started eating immediately, tearing through the food. They hadn't spoken since Natsu woke up again. Gray didn't mind all that much. The silence was nice sometimes, in between sessions.

Natsu finished, tossed all the garbage back in the plastic bag. It was a good thing he knew how to clean after himself. Gray didn't like messy projects. They usually didn't last long enough to be worth picking up after. They'd survive maybe three or four days. He had a few last a couple of weeks who starved to death, but those were mistakes in the early years. Witnessing starvation didn't stave off the nightmares. It was a pitiful sight, really.

His eyes trailed over Natsu's skin, he'd only left him boxers to wear. There were scars now, places where the nails had dug in too deep for too long, all along his arms, almost as if Natsu had tattooed several small patches, a centimeter wide each, several shades lighter than his own skin, on both the inner and outer parts of his arms. Just above the left side of his abdomen, right along the area of skin over the lowest rib, was a thin vertical line, maybe two inches wide, with a sort of circle through the middle of it. It almost looked like a white tattoo of the gates of tartarus. It was beautiful. The kind of scar no one else would ever have because no one else would survive the wound.

Gray took the trash, left Natsu in his restraints. There was a harness around the top of his body that only allowed him to move about a foot up from the table. His legs were still strapped down. His wrists were now bound in leather restraints that Gray had loosened only slightly so that he could reach his food to eat.

He walked back out with the trash silently, going up the stairs and into the house, tossing the bag away once he got to the bin outside. He had wired the money from one of his richer victims into several accounts offshore and was now a very wealthy man under a variety of aliases. Enough so, to buy himself a nice house near the woods. Less populated. Less traffic cameras. Less risk.

He made his way back to Natsu. The guy had been giving Gray the cold shoulder today and Gray hadn't even hurt him. Not yet. He supposed he felt betrayed, what with Gray recognizing him and still attacking him, but the point in time when they'd been 'Nakama' was a lifetime ago. Gray wasn't the same person anymore. Attachments were for the weak and he'd left that behind. There was only one exception, one person he'd never learned to let go of… but that was a lost cause and he'd had to go it alone. That wasn't going to change because the kid from his school days with salmon locks of hair and an innocent smile stumbled back into his life. Some people just had terrible luck. It wasn't Gray's problem. Natsu had certainly grown up to be interesting though. This whole regeneration ability had Gray overly curious. He'd already survived an excessive amount of bleeding, the kind that would have utterly destroyed any of his previous victims, he knew for sure they'd be entirely out of commission for the following days and he'd lose patience and just beat them to death. Of course, there'd been a few exceptions. The times he was branching out. Experimenting. But those were few and far in between and he wasn't quite at that point with Natsu yet. He didn't need to use his rare methods yet. With Natsu, he would take his time, savor the moment. Test the limits of the little talent his 'Nakama' had developed. He had to snort at the thought. He had crucified the man and still he tried to save him. Suicidal. Mental.

 _Interesting._

Because the crucifixion hadn't broken him. Debilitated him, sure, but not broken him. Gray wanted to see him break apart. But he also wanted to mark him. He wanted Natsu to be covered in his carvings. He wanted to make his skin his canvass. Seeing the scars his actions had left on that flawless skin gave Gray a feeling he couldn't fully put into words. Almost as if everything felt right with the world, something clicking into place in the haze of satisfaction that hadn't been there before and it had him tensing in anticipation.

Gray took out a couple of sharpie pens from a drawer in the small library on the second floor. A scalpel. A kitchen knife that was best for filleting meats. He took care to sharpen it before heading down to the basement. He kept the knife in front of himself because Natsu hadn't been very helpful this morning at all and that was a crying shame coming from the guy so desperate to 'help' him. Statistically, people responded with greater fear when someone had a knife than when they had a gun. If Natsu thought he could ignore Gray in his own space, he would realize pretty quickly that he couldn't do so. After all, Gray did him the courtesy of feeding him because he wanted him to last longer. There was no point in keeping a project for an extended period of time if they just starved to death. He wasn't that wasteful.

As soon as he entered the room, knife in his relaxed grip, Natsu's jaw tensed and Gray had a brief moment of heady satisfaction disproportionate to the situation at hand. A mere facial expression wasn't supposed to affect him that much. It probably had to do with it being someone he knew personally. He'd never taken a project he'd known before. It could lead to weaknesses that Gray wasn't willing to allow in himself. And yet, he had made an exception in a careless moment where he'd lost control. Embarrassing. But not irredeemable. As long as he didn't let the familiarity of the man on his table cloud his judgement.

Natsu turned his head toward Gray when he opened the door, laying on his back, glanced down at the knife, and let his eyes drift back to the ceiling as if Gray wasn't a worthy threat. This was what had Gray wasting food on Natsu, keeping the man alive. The imminent danger he was in didn't seem to register in his head no matter what Gray did and while he would scream in pain, he eventually recovered his wits enough to struggle against whatever Gray pinned on him. It was infuriating. No one had ever torn themselves away from the wall. Ever. Until Natsu. And other than the scratches, he was fine enough to lift his arms and feed himself the next day. Unfazed. Unafraid. _Unacceptable._

Gray slid the edge of the blade against the skin of Natsu's abdomen, right along the scar, delighting in the tightening of muscles there, the dread Natsu was hiding so poorly. He gripped the knife slightly, pulling it back, laid it on the table beside Natsu. He'd made sure to put double the leather restraints on the rosette's legs. For what he had planned, he couldn't have Natsu moving and he didn't want to use anymore of his limited drug supply when Natsu would deplete it so quickly. There were four leather straps along each of Natsu's legs, each about two inches wide, tight against his skin and belted below the table, two for each thigh, one for each calf, one for each ankle. Natsu tugged against the restraints on his wrists and Gray gripped the latches on them, pulling them tighter in a swift movement as Natsu glared at him, securing them.

He smiled with a bit of pride. They always looked better angry, as rare as that emotion was. Most of them skipped over that phase entirely, straight into pleading and desperation. Again, Gray had to wonder what Natsu had been through to withstand the pain he had put him through.

He took one pen out of his pocket, pulled up a chair by muscular tan legs, and started drawing. It was a hobby he'd picked up in high school while trying to blend in with the rest of the student body, a hobby so that he would seem normal. The fact that he'd gotten good and stuck with it was unexpected, but not unwelcome. It wasn't something he'd used on a project before, but he could be creative for Natsu. A little fun to commemorate their surprise reunion.

Gray drew all along his left leg. He started by drawing thick black lines to outline the restraints, he would fill in the empty spaces that were covered by them later with a different design. Over the exposed skin, he started with the tail of a dragon over the foot, disappearing under the first restraint, starting again just above it.

Natsu was eyeing Gray curiously because, while the tip of the pen was maybe a bit uncomfortable over his skin, it wasn't painful and as much as he wanted to turn away stubbornly… he was curious and Gray hadn't done anything worse than _they_ had. He was _marginally_ better in comparison.

Gray was completely focused on the design. He was drawing spaces at least a centimeter apart, knowing that would be the distance needed for them to stick based on the scars left from the nails, curving the design around the leg, and when he was finally finished two hours later, the dragon was black and shaded in with thin black lines, spine visible from the tail to the head, wings with exposed bone, and the design looked tribal and realistic at once, the head of the dragon resting over Natsu's hip breathing out a thin stream of flames over his abdomen.

Natsu had kept quiet during the process, not wanting to talk to the man who wasn't Gray anymore and not sure what he would even say, confused and yet astounded at the brilliance of the drawing. It was something he would have wanted tattooed and for a moment, just a moment, he wondered if Gray thought a tattoo would hurt enough to be considered torture. Then Gray took out the scalpel and Natsu's fists went white with the force he used to tug violently at the restraints. No. Not a scalpel. He didn't want that near his skin. He needed to get away. Not again. _Never again._

Gray held the scalpel in his grip, holding it right above the skin and then-

A growl ripped free of Natsu's throat. It was a disgusted low sound that gave Gray pause. He looked up into light green eyes and saw a look of absolute wrath shining in those depths. Gray's eyes stared back with a shine of accomplishment. He'd found a weakness it seemed, a fear. Natsu hadn't reacted to the nails with anything but trepidation, hadn't even glanced at the knife for more than two seconds, but the scalpel made him look like a tied down god, powerful, vengeful, and at Gray's mercy. Under his control.

The scalpel touched the skin, pressed along the line of the tail of the design, and Natsu shut his eyes, gritted his teeth, jaw tight, hands fisted and yanking at the restraints angrily. It wasn't the same. Gray didn't cut deep, just splitting the skin about half a centimeter in, but the familiar slow sensation of his skin being invaded, the precision, the clinical feeling of it all clouded Natsu's eyes. He couldn't make himself look, just feeling the tiny blade and it's incisions, a constant burn in his leg as if he was touching heated iron, the slow flow of blood that crept out of smaller veins rather than arteries feeling as if insects were crawling along his skin and it was so similar that he couldn't stand it, that he wanted to cry in frustration and he held back only because he knew crying out never helped. He had _screamed and cried and begged_ and it hadn't ever made a difference. _They_ had never listened. They'd just forced her to muffle his sounds as he suffered silently, whimpering into her hand, and that had only made it worse.

" _Shut him up. It's distracting me."_

 _She inhaled slowly, shakily letting out the breath of air in the sterile room, and she looked at him, a thousand apologies roaming throughout obsidian irises as they watered and she placed her thin pale hand over his mouth. He closed his eyes because it always hurt, it was always painful, but when she was forced to be complacent it always hurt more. Natsu just wanted her to be spared, to get away from this, to go back and protect her brother and never see them again. Every time they held their threats over her head, every time she cried as she was forced to do their job for them as they stared behind glass panels, his hatred grew a little more._

Natsu bit his lip hard enough for it to split in a diagonal cut and bleed and still he bit down on it, deepening the small wound, needing that pain to distract him, needing something else to hold onto because he wouldn't be the broken thing he'd become back then. He had promised her. _Never again._ He was so concentrated on ignoring the scalpel that the knife slipping into the indents left and tearing off his skin made him screech between gritted teeth, blood now poured down his ankle and he was gasping at the pulsing pain, biting back his protests to remain strong. She hadn't wanted him to ever break again. He dug his own nails into the skin of his palms because the memories were flooding him with every second the scalpel remained carving into his flesh. While the knife made the tears break free and the skin kept coming off in curled up strands of meat that made him want to wretch, it was still preferable to the scalpel. Because when the scalpel dug into his skin, the initial breach of cells, it was like their hands again, or hers when they couldn't stand to touch him and they held their threats over her head. Gray's touch reminded him too much of hers. It was cold and soft, yet firm and determined just like hers and the flash of her eyes in his mind had him sobbing, all his teeth on display as he tried to bite the sobs down, to hold them inside when they were determined to claw their way up his throat.

Gray frowned as he continued the process. He was filleting off chunks of skin, a small pile was forming on the floor, and all he was getting were gritted sobs. He gripped the scalpel tighter, digging deeper in the muscle and finally he had a louder reaction.

Natsu lifted his head, straining his neck to look down at Gray, to make him see how disgusting his actions were, but more importantly, to let out a high manic laugh as he let out, "You're wasting your fucking time," sucking in air through his teeth, "It's not deep enough to scar." And it wasn't. They'd had her test it. He had prayed for scars so that they could write down what it took to get them and he'd never had them. Until the nails had stayed just deep enough for just long enough to leave them. But Gray wasn't cutting deep now. It wouldn't scar. It never fucking _scarred._

Gray smiled thinly. "It's not deep enough," he admitted. He leaned forward, his face just above Natsu's, smile growing wide and menacing, "But it's wide enough." He leant back to his previous position, knife sliding beneath the edges of skin that he'd split apart with the scalpel, sliding it through elegantly in the lines, listening to the muffled screams, then taking one fold of skin in between his thumb and index finger and peeling the rest of it, cutting off the straining muscle tendons that still clung to it in the end, watching the bright red fluid leak down the sides of Natsu's trembling left thigh, the exposed pink muscle beneath coated over in a thin translucent sheen of red. Gray had skinned men alive before. He'd never done it quite so delicately, slowly. Each area of removed flesh formed little pools of blood that dripped ever so slightly. _Gorgeous._ He stared at his work in awe.

Natsu glanced down to see what the hell Gray meant by 'wide enough,' once he stopped feeling the scalpel on his skin and needing to look away. He saw the cavities in his flesh, the pools of blood, the exposed muscle that was a dark shade of pink beneath all the red, but he saw the look Gray was giving the bloody carvings last. He had an expression of deep fascination and Natsu's eyes narrowed because the looks he'd seen behind glass panels kept flashing in his head and he said, "You're fucking sick." His chest was covered in a sheen of sweat and the veins along his neck and forearms were all exposed with the amount of strain he was exuding, fists and jaw clenched tight during the entire process, and still he managed to say, "You're fucking _sick in the head."_ The sides of his hair were wet with his own tears. He dropped his head back against the table and stared at the ceiling, teeth still gritting against each other through sharp intakes of breath.

Gray snapped out of his admiration and Natsu missed the look of shock that morphed into mounting frustration. Gray had felt excited to hear Natsu's voice, thinking it would feature a desperate plea to stop, begging. Instead, Natsu still had the nerve and resolve to insult him. _Why isn't he breaking?_ The scalpel was an obvious weakness, the only one Gray had found so far, and it still wasn't enough. Gray quickly carved out the rest of the dragon, all thoughts of stunned pride in his work gone. He just wanted to get it over with and that was something that made him want to scream in vexation. No _mere_ project was supposed to impede his enjoyment. No one had ever made him want to 'just get it over with.' Ever. He brought them to the brink of insanity and made them beg for the end. Natsu was trembling with the exhaustion and the stinging running all along his leg and abdomen, but Gray was shaking with the need to see him despondent, _suffocating with his own despair._

And he knew just how to make it happen.

He dropped the knife and the scalpel on the floor and left the room, coming back with a funnel in one hand and a white plastic container in the other without the cap. Natsu turned in his direction with a tired expression, head turning back toward the ceiling in a perfect imitation of the previous time Gray walked in. In four quick strides, Gray was right beside him shoving the funnel into his mouth as Natsu's eyes shot open and he fought to turn away. Gray poured a stream of the liquid in the container rapidly, throwing the container as soon as the stream fell through the funnel into Natsu's mouth. Natsu was coughing and trying to move and Gray forced his jaw up to relax his throat, holding the funnel in place until he saw the last of the liquid disappearing down it. The container for the drain cleaner lay in a puddle on the other side of the room.

A soon as he let go of the funnel, Natsu spit it across the room, and it wasn't long before he was dry heaving, before his chest rose up and down unsteadily, before he was coughing up blood and choking on it. His limbs were jolting violently in their restraints and Natsu's eyes were wide open, bloodshot. Gray sat and watched, as the blood rose up and out of pretty pink lips, as Natsu turned to the side to vomit out more in an effort to not drown in it. He waited until the majority of Natsu's skin had gone ghostly pale. He waited until every pore on Natsu's body was sweating. He waited for the coughing to stop. He waited until Natsu lay limply on the table, staring at him with narrowed eyes that stayed shut a little longer every time he blinked and he knew that his throat should have healed just enough for him to speak quietly. He waited for the moment where, like the others, Natsu would finally break and ask him to put him out of his misery. He waited. That moment never came. Natsu just stared at him silently, even as his body still quivered with the lethal liquid coursing through them.

Gray could see the pain Natsu was in. It had to be twisting up his insides, tearing him up from the inside. He couldn't understand it anymore, couldn't stop himself from asking what he needed to know.

"Why don't you ever beg me to stop?" he queried, because in all of their little interactions, not once had Natsu asked him to stop, not once had he begged, not once had he become as lifeless as the others.

Natsu stared into those dark midnight eyes. The eyes he'd held onto for hope in his mind before they'd sent _her_ in with him. _Because I've been through all of this before. Because you can't break me like they did. Because they never stopped when I begged them to, so why would you? Because I promised her I'd never break again._

"If I did, would it stop you?" he asked, voice barely more than hot breaths of air that could barely be interpreted as sentences.

Gray looked away, suddenly unable to meet those light green eyes. He'd tried to give it all up before, when he went looking for _her._ She would have hated what he'd become. He knew that. But the nightmares were too strong, came too often, hurt too much, and he'd never found her. He'd never found a reason to try stopping again. Not when the images kept playing through his head.

He shook his head. "I can't stop," he said, and he found himself trembling in shock and fear when he realized how helpless those three words sounded coming from his lips.

He allowed his gaze to reach Natsu's eyes, but his heart froze at the sight of a pained smile. He felt his eyes watering and he knew he needed to look away, but he couldn't. Natsu had called him 'fucking sick in the head,' and yet he still tried to smile for him and Gray felt a stinging in his eyes as he stared at the man before him disbelievingly.

Then the mutual stare was broken when Natsu coughed up more of the red substance, choking on it slightly before he turned his head again to spew it out onto the side of the table and the floor. The way Natsu moved as he choked, the wide eyes and the sound of him wheezing in breaths of air after the blood fell beside him, made Gray inhale sharply.

 _Natsu ran toward Gray holding something in his hands._

 _Gray lowered his face to hide his smile as Natsu got closer and then Natsu was knocking him over with an overly enthusiastic hug that left him a little winded even as color rose to his cheeks._

" _Natsu!" he shouted, trying to get him off because he didn't even hug Ur as much as he hugged Natsu at this point and the only person who had hugged him that much before had been… he shook his head to clear the sad thoughts of her._

 _Natsu just pulled back, still sitting on Gray's stomach and shoving the item in his little hands in front of Gray's face. "Igneel bought us gummy bears!" he announced cheerfully. Igneel would buy Natsu something when Natsu's begging finally wore him down and Natsu would always share it with Gray, stating that it was 'theirs.' Gray smiled softly up at Natsu who finally climbed off of him and sat cross-legged beside him on the pavement. Natsu was late again, arriving to school in the middle of recess, but that tended to happen when even Igneel was at his wits' end trying to pull a sleepy Natsu away from his bed and his pile of blankets._

 _Gray took the plastic and tore it open at the top, taking two gummy bears and handing it back to Natsu. Natsu was not so reserved with his eating habits. He stuffed two handfuls of gummy bears in his mouth and started chewing, cheeks puffed out slightly and Gray covered his mouth to keep from giggling out loud when suddenly Natsu's eyes went wide and round, his hands let the packaging slip through, and he grabbed at his throat. His mouth was open and he was making wheezing sounds and Gray rushed to get behind him, wrapping his arms around him, balling up his fist and using his other hand to grasp that fist and thud it against the space just over Natsu's stomach, repeating the motion twice, harder, desperately until Natsu finally coughed up a pile of chewed up gummy bears and breathed in loud, chest rising erratically as he coughed._

 _Ur had taught Gray how to perform the heimlich maneuver just before he started school, but he didn't think he'd need to use it so soon. Gray gripped Natsu tight against him, face buried into the back of his neck, until he felt Natsu's breathing slowing down, heart beating quickly but strongly in his chest. Gray had let him go after he spoke up asking, "Gray?" in a curious tone of voice and he'd just shrugged, not knowing how to explain the need to hold Natsu after almost losing him, not knowing how to describe the sensation burning in his chest, or the impulse he'd had to cry. Natsu had sent side glances at Gray for the rest of the day, turning a small shade of pink whenever Gray turned to look at him and caught him staring and Gray had gone home with Ur lost as to what that shade of pink on Natsu's face meant._

Gray walked to the cabinet silently, taking out a pair of handcuffs. He turned back to Natsu, latching one cuff around his left wrist and unfastening the restraint that kept his arms locked against the table. Natsu glanced at him through half-shut eyes, not even strong enough to fight it when Gray took his hand in his own, pulling it delicately toward his other, now unrestrained, hand, linking them together as he snapped the handcuffs shut. Natsu's airway burned too much for him to muster up the effort it would take to ask anything. His curiousity did not abate when Gray cut off the harness that reduced his mobility. Then Gray was pulling his torso up, like he was trying to get Natsu to sit up when Natsu didn't have the strength to do so on his own. Natsu just let his eyes fall shut the rest of the way for the moment because Gray's hands against his skin were cold and soft and it reminded him so much of _her,_ of the times she took care of him afterwards, and even if Gray wasn't her, he still wanted to let himself believe for a moment that she was there with him, still alive, still breathing, still helping him feel a little safe.

His eyes shot back open, even in his exhaustion, when he felt a cold toned chest against his back, strong arms wrapping around his waist, Gray's head against the back of his neck. He could feel the stinging in his eyes as tears slipped out against his will because it didn't feel like her anymore, the chest was too hard, the arms too toned, the hair too short, and yet the cold was just the same, and it still felt achingly familiar and comforting. He wanted to fight it, but a small fragile part of his brain was begging him to just lean into the embrace. He held onto consciousness, fighting the heaviness of his eyelids and asked in a raspy whisper, "Why are you doing this?"

Gray was silent for a while. He started rubbing slow circles over the skin where the dragon's, now, white head lay, the scars already forming, the blood drying along the edges of the indents in the skin. Natsu shuddered slightly under the cold ministrations. The newly formed skin was still a very thin layer and the indents were sensitive. He tried to stave off the pull of sleep under the soothing touches as Gray trailed his hands up against the scar over his rib, the light graze of his fingers making Natsu tighten his abdomen slightly, wincing at the pain the movement caused. Then Gray spoke in response to Natsu's question with a command.

"Just be quiet," he murmured, breath ghosting over the top of Natsu's spine.

Natsu wanted to argue. He wanted to demand an answer. He wanted to ask again. He found himself doing nothing of the sort as his eyes finally drifted shut and he went limp in Gray's arms, body weak and burning off all remaining energy to heal itself. Gray didn't care that he was sitting in Natsu's blood. He didn't know why he was doing this.

Gray breathed in deeply, shuddering as he let it out. He couldn't tell if Natsu was dying or not. Anyone else would have died by now; Natsu's ability made him hope he could hold out. He let his arms loosen their hold around Natsu slightly, glancing over Natsu's shoulder at the scars climbing up his leg. He would have to clean the blood, obviously. But the scars themselves, forming because there was no skin to heal back together between the cuts, looked incredible, a white dragon etched into the flesh. He trailed his fingertips over them. The scars stayed. Every wound that Gray had made left its mark on flawless tan skin that nothing else had ever marked. When he'd started to cut out the designs, Natsu had said that he was wasting his time, that the cuts weren't deep enough to scar, as if someone had tried to mark him before. Something gelid settled in Gray's veins, a storm spreading through his bloodstream as he thought of someone else ever marking this skin. It wasn't theirs to mark. He closed his eyes and shoved the feeling away. He would still have to _kill_ Natsu eventually. He couldn't let himself get possessive, _attached._ Still, he knew that anyone who came after Natsu would be deeply disappointing. He sighed gently, letting his chin rest on Natsu's shoulder.

The scent of blood and sweat and cinnamon was intoxicating. He shut his eyes. When he felt that Natsu's breathing had evened out, that his pulse was still beating, that he would survive, he pulled away, leaving Natsu behind and heading to the door. He paused in the doorway, turning back to let his eyes rake over Natsu once more. Salmon strands of hair, tan skin, and _strength_ Gray had never encountered before. He closed the door. Anyone else would pale in comparison.


	7. The Real You

Natsu tried to open one eye. His eyelids felt heavy and he felt incredibly weak, fragile and unprepared. He saw the blurry form of Gray sitting in the chair beside him, smelled the scent of disinfectant and soap, felt the wetness of his own hair, the feeling of dried blood gone from his skin. Gray had given him a sponge bath and cleaned the room. The thought made him release a chuckle, more like a raspy breath of air in his amusement. A serial killer had given him a bath. Hilarious. The movement of his sudden breath made him aware of a fuzzy white blanket draped over him. Kind of like snow. Dazedly, he shifted beneath it, feeling the warmth and shivering against the cold metal surface beneath him. He blinked blearily at Gray, trying to move and wincing as every tiny motion he made caused him pain.

Gray raised a hand to brush it through soft salmon locks of wet hair. Natsu leaned into the cold touch before he could help it, trying to turn his head away once he realized what he was doing but too exhausted to manage it, just laying his head sleepily on Gray's hand. It was cold, but it was soothing and it made Natsu realize that despite his shivering, his own body was scalding hot in comparison. This feeling was familiar and yet it seemed so distant in his mind, like a memory he couldn't place.

"You have a fever," Gray let him know, voice quiet as he carded his fingers over Natsu's scalp.

"Hmm," Natsu mumbled out in response. He had a fever. That was… brilliant. A small dazed smile broke out on his face, only half-formed in his tiredness. He hadn't had a fever or a cold or anything since he was taken as a child. They'd cured him, like the others, and charged a price none of them ever knew they would have to pay. His smile widened all the more as he realized what the feeling was. Igneel. His dad wrapping him in blankets when he had a fever and carding rough fingers through his hair to lull him to sleep as a kid.

"Can you sit up?" Gray's voice sounded distorted to his ears, like something he was hearing when he was still half-asleep and drifting through his dreams, a voice from the outside piercing its way inside. Natsu let out a raspy laugh. The image of Gray tearing his way into a dream world was funny.

Gray sighed. He knew Natsu wouldn't be able to lift his arms let alone his body. He stepped out, leaving a mumbling Natsu on the table and bringing a pillow and a bowl of soup into the room. He placed the bowl of soup on the chair and gently lifted Natsu's head, placing the pillow beneath it, turning his attention back to the bowl of soup as the captive sighed lightly, small chuckles making it past his lips. Gray picked up the bowl of soup, taking a seat again and scooting the chair closer to the table. He used a spoon, blowing softly on the food before bringing it to Natsu's lips.

"Here," he said, "You need to eat something."

Sleepy green eyes blinked slowly in his direction, a small yawn, and then Natsu was leaning his head forward a fraction of an inch, letting Gray feed him the soup. Natsu chewed with a great amount of effort, swallowing down the mouthful with a small wince, and still somehow enjoying the warmth the meal brought him. He let his eyes drift over Gray. The man was much less blurry, and while it took him more energy than he felt it should to merely glance at him, he couldn't help it. Gray was blowing softly at another spoonful of soup. The sight brought a hazy image to Natsu's mind, him sitting up on a pile of pillows that Igneel had arranged for him, a little Gray storming in and demanding that Natsu eat something because he didn't like the others at school and 'how dare' Natsu 'abandon' him and then say he didn't want to eat food to get better. Natsu remembered hearing Ur tell a perplexed Igneel that Gray had insisted she teach him to make the soup she made for him and Lyon when they were sick. That she _had_ to because Natsu was his ' _nakama'_ and families were _supposed to take care of each other._

Gray brought another spoonful to his lips and Natsu took his time savoring it, eyes watering as he recognized the same taste from back then and he swallowed it down with another wince. He managed to eat most of the soup, only stopping when his cough broke out once more and Gray put the soup down on the ground, reaching one hand behind Natsu's head and another around his waist to lift him up a bit, easing the strain on his lungs but still causing pain to explode in his abdomen.

Once the coughing stopped, Gray placed him back over the pillow gently, the blanket over his body riding low on his hips, the top of his new carving in full view. Gray traced his fingertips over the scars, slowly and lightly, and Natsu shivered at the feeling. Gray scraped one nail over the thin layers of skin and Natsu's hips spasmed at the cold feeling, at the exposure. He closed his eyes and failed to notice Gray's smile.

Those cold fingertips were still tracing small circles over the indents on his skin, sending shivers up his spine and he didn't even have the energy to grit his teeth. It was like his own body was betraying him, showing his reactions too easily. His defenses were too low. He could feel it, the drain that the healing had taken from his muscles. It probably would have taken enough out of him to heal the marred flesh of his leg alone, but the damage to the inside of his organs had been added into the mix and he'd passed out, his immune system taking all the fight out of him to keep him alive. The energy to restrain himself, to hide his reactions, to try to resist or protect himself? That was all gone. It wouldn't be back for days. He was completely defenceless and at Gray's mercy. The fact that Gray was simply taking care of him and absently tracing over his scars made him nervous and yet, it was impossible for him not to relax under the soft ministrations. They felt like home. They reminded him of Igneel and his childhood and the person Gray really was underneath the hardened exterior. He let his eyes drift open to watch Gray. He looked pale, flawless skin and midnight blue eyes that didn't shine quite as bright as they once had, and even so, he still looked… he didn't really know how to say it, the words lost in his muddled up brain.

Gray was watching the way Natsu looked at him, like he was trying to catch a glimpse of someone he knew, a soft look as if Gray meant something to him and it made him shift uneasily. Natsu was lying there on his table, weak and exposed, a flush climbing down his neck, and somehow Gray felt like the vulnerable one. He hated it. Natsu wasn't the one in control here.

Gray stood up, looking over Natsu's form once more. He'd only left one restraint on each ankle, the handcuffs around tan wrists, and nothing else but a blanket so that the man wouldn't keel over from a fever. Natsu was shivering slightly, little drops of sweat were trickling down the side of his neck, his eyes were only open a fraction of an inch.

He walked to his drawers again. Opened the second one from the top. He measured out 0.2 grams of the white powder. He would have been nervous about using a normal dosage on his childhood friend, but his system was still severely weakened, his pulse steady but a few beats slower than normal. 0.2 g would be fine. He prepared the fix, waiting until the liquid solution became a sort of dark honey brown color, almost like maple syrup. He brought out a syringe, plunging it into the liquid and drawing it up, pushing the lever down slightly afterward to make sure there was no air mingled in. Once he was satisfied, he went to sit back down at Natsu's beside. He let his fingers trace over the small circular scars along Natsu's inner arm. The scarred man let his eyes slip shut and he exhaled, completely relaxed and seemingly unaware of what Gray held in his right hand.

Gray let his voice come out soft as he asked, "You're weakened now, aren't you?"

Natsu opened one eye to look at him, closing it again, and letting out a tiny hum of acknowledgement. Gray smiled. His thumb trailed the skin on the inside of a tan elbow. He felt a slight rise under the skin on the left corner. Natsu wasn't paying attention. He had let himself grow comfortable and that was something Gray couldn't condone.

He slid the needle into the vein, watching the way Natsu's eyebrows drew together in a small grimace and he tried pulling away weakly as Gray held his arm in place. He pulled the plunger back a little, seeing the small red strand of blood creeping into the golden brown mixture that let him know he'd located the vein properly, and then he pushed the plunger down with his thumb, the substance disappearing out of view.

One second. Two. Green eyes widened and a flush crept all over tan skin. Natsu looked at Gray, pupils blown wide as his shivering stopped and he found himself breathing a little easier, his muscles still too weak to move, the pain in his abdomen drowned out by a rush of pleasure that made him feel dizzy, like everything was tilting out of focus.

"W-what," he stuttered, his brain hazy, everything slowing down, taking on a shade of rose in his eyes, like a dream as he finally got out, "What did… you…?"

Everything felt good, the metal against his back, the fur of the blanket, the cuffs holding his wrists together. He felt like he was back with Igneel, like he hadn't lost her, like he was still a child sitting beside Gray at lunch time arguing over the best flavor of juice, all his worries dissipating. He looked up at Gray in astonishment, suddenly noticing that Gray looked like an angel, completely flawless. Natsu saw Gray smiling and it looked wrong on his face, too smug and dark for something so pretty but Natsu found himself smiling in return. He couldn't remember the last time he'd ever felt so _happy._

Gray leaned in, close to Natsu's face and Natsu felt his heart slowing and it was so peaceful he couldn't even think to question it and Gray whispered, "I gave you heroin."

He was still smiling and Natsu felt his own smile fading, and still, he couldn't think of the right words to say, everything getting mixed up in his head before he could put together a coherent string of words. Gray kept speaking to him as he stroked his thumb over Natsu's cheek and Natsu felt a flush rising on his face that he couldn't comprehend.

"I promise you," Gray said, staring directly into his eyes, "Pain isn't the only way to break people."

Natsu was finding it very difficult to care at the moment. Gray's touch soothed him, it brought back happy comforting memories and being broken was the furthest thing from his mind. He was floating in sensations of warmth with only a cool touch to ground him and as he looked up at those dark eyes through the shining haze, a thought formed in his head. _This must be what heaven feels like._

He didn't know he said the words out loud.

Gray's look of shock seemed funny and he found himself giggling softly because he didn't know what it was for.

Gray walked out of the room. When he returned thirty minutes later, Natsu felt much weaker than he had before and the happy emotions that had flooded through him were gone, making him feel desolate. Gray gave him water regularly, stayed with him as he drifted in and out of consciousness. He lost track of what day it was and how long he'd been there, everything blurring together in his mind because of how often he was passing out and the fact that the room was lit with dim light bulbs rather than windows. The time was lost on him. All he knew was that each time he woke, Gray was there to feed him small amounts of food and make him drink water, telling him gently that he needed to stay hydrated, holding up his head so he wouldn't have to use the energy to do it himself. Natsu hadn't had anyone take care of him so thoroughly since… no, not even she was allowed to see him that often. And Igneel often left Natsu with Zeref before… before he disappeared. Even when it was just him and Igneel, his dad had to work and someone else would watch Natsu. As far as he could remember, no one had ever taken care of him like this, there when he woke up, there when he went to sleep, not stepping out of the room for more than ten minutes at a time. Gray, this one, the _real_ one, was caring and attentive and it confused Natsu to no end. _How could someone so considerate do the things he did?_

Then Natsu regained enough mobility to move his arms up a couple of inches and he was being strapped down again, no more handcuffs. It didn't matter. Gray was taking care of him.

Gray injected the substance into his bloodstream again and Natsu tried to protest, but then the feeling of happiness flooded him once more and he couldn't put up any resistance. He had prayed for scars once and Gray had marked him. He had wanted anyone from his family to be alive, and he didn't expect it to happen, he had never imagined this scenario playing out as a result, but Gray appeared. In the middle of the ocean. He had started accepting the booze that Cana brought to the boat, had drawn sketches of tattoos until his hands hurt and he'd gone days without sleep, had even taken to cutting himself at one point, all in an attempt to feel something again that wasn't simply fear. Gray injected happiness into his blood. None of it came in the form he'd wanted, none of it came as a relief. But Gray was giving him all the things he'd asked for and he wanted to hate him, but in his drugged haze he would look at the symmetrical scars on his arms, the vertical line over his rib, the white dragon peeking over his abdomen, Gray's eyes and think, ' _Beautiful.'_ It was an insane thought and he knew it. None of it was supposed to be beautiful. He should be revolted. He just felt unbelievably happy, the beat of his heart slow in his chest, his pulse rhythmic in his ears, his veins filled with… he laughed at himself… heroin.

Then he was turning his head and vomiting into a bucket that Gray held at his side. He tugged at his restraints as he started feeling an itch throughout his body, wanting to scratch and gritting his teeth in frustration at his inability to do so. The pain was returning and his head felt heavy, his world spinning slightly off balance and Gray cleaned up his sickness, wiping down the table with disinfectant and towels, bringing Natsu a new pillow, checking his temperature, feeding him small amounts of food again and having him drink water constantly, hooking up a catheter to him during one of the times he drifted off so that he wouldn't have to get up to pee. He blacked out again after eating.

When he woke up, Gray inserted the needle again and Natsu didn't try to stop him anymore. Those slow shocks of happiness were becoming something he looked forward to, something he needed. They took his pain away. They chipped away at his grief. They made it okay to lose control. He would throw up afterward and his skin would crawl and he would feel all the more devastated, but Gray would take care of him. Gray would trace small circles over his skin to calm him. Gray would bring him soup and water and clean up after him and it would be worth it because Gray made it bearable.

Just as he thought, Gray watched over him, cleaned up after him, even briefly placed a shock collar around his neck to keep him from fighting back as he helped him out of the basement and into the bathroom of the house, letting him use the toilet and drawing him a bath. He washed Natsu's hair. Natsu felt fragile and that was frightening because he'd never allowed himself to feel that way for such an extended period of time and yet, when Gray carried him in his arms back down the stairs, he felt that cold feeling of familiarity again, contentedness.

Gray placed his restraints back on his ankles, his calfs, and over his wrists. He removed the collar and gave Natsu a cruel smile that had him tense in a sudden wave of apprehension. He thought Gray might hurt him again, bring out a scalpel. He felt an all-encompassing dread in the pit of his stomach. All Gray did was walk out of the room.

Gray had been such a constant presence in the last few days that Natsu waited for him to return. He found himself falling asleep before that happened.

For the first time since the drain cleaner incident, Natsu woke up to the sight of an empty sterile room. Gray wasn't there. He started feeling hungry, his stomach empty and Gray didn't show. His mouth was dry and he wanted water and he called out angrily, frustratedly pulling at his restraints as time went on and he gained more mobility, his limbs still shaking with the effort. He fell asleep from exhaustion and woke up to the same emptiness, only now he was retching when there wasn't anything to throw up, only transparent liquid making its way up his throat, the smell putrid. He was sweating and shivering at the same time and he breathed in through his mouth, a runny nose making it difficult to get air into his system. He couldn't sleep. It felt like ages before the door swung open and Natsu's eyes shot over to look at Gray's hand.

Gray was holding a bag of takeout. Food. Natsu set a frantic gaze on his other hand and the absence of a syringe nearly made him whimper. He was inwardly cringing at his own weakness but he wanted that needle again. He wanted to feel happy. He wanted to stop shaking. He was looking for the high. The food didn't matter to him anymore.

Gray simply smiled at him, a simple smile that held no sympathy.

"You won't be getting the drug anymore," he said matter-of-factly.

Natsu was biting back tears and he forced himself not to cry as another spasm shook him and liquid forced its way up his throat, the stench clouding his senses and making him retch harder when there was nothing left to expel from his body. Gray cleaned up after him, mopping the floor, wiping down the table, cleaning the sick from his hair and washing it down with little buckets of water, towelling him dry, bringing him a new blanket, a pink one this time.

"I went out and bought it for you," he said. He pulled the chair back up beside Natsu, sitting beside him, fingers trailing the underside of his jaw. Natsu glanced over at the drawers on the wall. He kept sending them anxious looks, the craving gnawing at him.

"No," Gray said, "No more."

Green eyes shut tightly, a tan jaw clenching under a cold touch. Natsu wouldn't beg him. He wasn't that far gone. He wouldn't break. He just felt like he was alarmingly close to the breaking point.

Neither of them brought it up again. Gray fed him, cleaned him up each time that he vomited over himself, cleaned away the sick and kept the room smelling like disinfectant and lavender. He bought him cough drops to alleviate his sore throat, kept him hydrated, went out and bought him a box of Vicks menthol patches, placing a new one over his chest every few hours to help him breathe. Gray even gave him a 5 mg pill of melatonin to help him rest once he saw that Natsu kept yawning but couldn't sleep. He was there when green eyes opened blearily and the intense feeling of relief in Natsu's chest at the fact that he wasn't alone in the sterile room again scared him senseless. His anxiety increased when he saw the white blanket draped over him, his left leg peeking out from the side of it. Gray had washed the blanket that Natsu had, at some point in his disorientation, said 'reminded him of snow.'

Gray brought a cup of water to his lips again and Natsu swallowed, with much less pain than before. Gray seemed so focused on helping him now that Natsu couldn't stand it anymore. It just didn't make sense to him. None of this fit with the man who smiled at a bloody and marred leg or smirked when he found a weakness.

"Why are you helping me?" he asked. He wasn't naive enough to believe that Gray felt guilty for anything he'd put him through. He was nursing him back to health, bringing up his strength again, and Natsu wanted to know what for.

Gray met his eyes, glancing away a moment later and letting his thumb slide over the skin of the dragon head, causing one last shiver to run up Natsu's spine, goosebumps rising on his arms. He brought up his left hand, tracing his way up Natsu's neck, coming to a stop as his fingers slid behind the rosette's ear, his thumb softly stroking a tan defined cheek. Natsu found himself leaning into the touch, now more out of habit than anything else, the cold allowing some of the tension to ease out of him.

"Why aren't you asking me to stop?" Gray countered.

It was a valid question. Anyone who saw them would think Natsu had lost his mind. Natsu tilted his head more into Gray's palm. Gray kept hurting him. Kept bringing him to the edge of insanity. But then Gray would take care of him like he'd never been cared for. He could have killed him the day he took him. He could kill him even now. He wasn't doing it and Natsu knew he wasn't getting away from Gray alive. Gray looked at the scars on his skin possessively. The only way Natsu was getting away from him would be in a set of black plastic bags. He would probably die in this room, beneath a two story house surrounded by woods. So if he took solace in Gray's touch, in the way it felt just as cold and soothing as hers… he would allow himself to do so with no regrets. Gray had already said his fate was sealed anyway.

"You said you can't stop," Natsu reminded him, voice quiet with a hint of teasing that made Gray bite back a smile.

 _Gray was cornered between them and the wall. He hadn't wanted to run but he'd been outnumbered and in the end it didn't matter that he tried to get away. They caught up to him anyway._

" _Thought you could get away?" one of them asked. Gray bit the inside of his cheek. Going into the bungalows of the school to try to lose them had been a mistake. Now no one would find him._

 _The others laughed and then Gray tried to run past one of them only to get punched in the face. A series of hits came from four different directions and Gray held his arms over his head to protect himself when he heard-_

" _Gray!"_

 _There was a pause in the hits and Gray looked up, eyes locking with angry green ones. Then Natsu was lunging at the nearest of the older kids, yanking brown patches of hair clean off his scalp and kicking another kid in the face when he tried to interfere. The others turned their attention from Gray to the salmon-haired boy and as they started heading for him, Gray tripped one, taking out a book from his backpack and smashing it against the biggest one's nose._

 _Both of them fought violently, wildly, with everything they had and the others finally realized it was more trouble than it was worth, leaving them together on the pavement when they should have been in class ten minutes earlier. Lunch was already over. Gray glanced over at Natsu, out of breath and scratched up, face red from the exertion. He shook his head in confusion._

" _Why would you do that?" he asked, because Natsu could have been seriously hurt and they were older kids and he shouldn't have jumped in, he should have called someone for help instead._

 _Natsu grinned widely, declaring, "I can take anything!"_

 _Gray smothered a laugh and rolled his eyes, a soft smile remaining on his face._

 _Natsu took his hand in his and pulled him up._

" _And anyway," he said, "We're Nakama. We're supposed to take care of each other." His voice had a teasing edge, as if he thought Gray was ridiculous for expecting things to be any different. He didn't let go of Gray's hand. Gray didn't feel like letting go either. Natsu was too busy noticing how pretty Gray's smile was to realize they were still holding hands when they got to class._

Gray could still feel small tremors of withdrawal along Natsu's jaw and he brought his other hand up to brush salmon strands of hair out of his face. He had wanted to break Natsu, but now Natsu was breaking his walls down and he didn't know how to stop it.

"You're insane," he whispered.

At that, Natsu laughed shakily. Little chuckles vibrated in his chest.

"I don't think you're much better," he informed Gray.

Gray didn't know if stopping it was possible. He was supposed to kill Natsu. He should've done it days ago. There was something about Natsu that wasn't allowing him to let go, holding his interest and curiosity and there was a feeling in the back of Gray's mind that he couldn't place. Something achingly familiar and lost that seemed to be a little less out of reach each time they spoke. He wanted to know what it was. He wasn't sure what he was doing anymore. He wasn't even sure if he _wanted_ to stop it.

Gray smiled, and for the first time since Natsu woke up in the small room, it wasn't scary or cruel or a prelude to malice. It was a soft, vulnerable thing, self-deprecating and fragile, and Natsu caught sight of the kid he once knew. He saw Gray, _the real Gray,_ behind dark glimmering eyes and his own eyes watered, a single tear slipping down the side of his face into Gray's palm because this person, the one who took care of him and held him and brushed the hair softly out of his face, this was the Gray he knew, the Gray he'd been trying to save. There was that smile again. The one that was pretty when they were kids… but looked absolutely _devastating_ now.


	8. I Hate You, Gray

It was now the thirteenth day that Natsu spent under Gray's roof. Things had escalated so quickly. That wasn't exactly abnormal for Gray. Natsu had already lasted him nearly two weeks and, excluding the starved projects which did nothing for him, he'd never kept anyone for so long before. He was more shocked by the fact that he didn't quite feel the urge to hurt Natsu anymore. Of course, he still wanted to mark the man and that would require hurting him in the process like he had before, but he didn't want to do it for the pain it might inflict as much as for the end result, his marks on tan skin. He felt oddly… calm around the pinkette. Even if that made him uncomfortable, it also made him hesitant to break the small semblance of peace they'd developed the previous night.

He went down into the customized basement with food, water, and every intention of not causing his captive any pain for the day.

Natsu was barely waking up, soft locks of hair tousled messily, bright green eyes opening slightly, a small comfortable sigh as the man let his head rest heavily on the pillow beneath his head. He was by no means as strong as he had been before his captivity began, but he no longer looked like death had warmed over. He looked a little nervous as Gray entered, but once he saw that Gray wasn't exactly dressed enough to hide anything, he averted his eyes and closed them.

Gray wasn't wearing much, just boxers and a pair of cotton shorts. It wasn't practical to wear a lot of clothes when he'd have to wash the blood out of them at the end of the day or just burn them and get new ones. He was well off financially, but he wasn't wasteful.

He sat on the chair. At this point, he kept the chair beside the table most of the time since he usually ended up spending most of the day watching over the man. Gray knew that was abnormal. He usually didn't need to feed or care for his projects because they died within the first couple of days. Those that he'd kept for a longer amount of time were fed once every few days, at least until whatever Gray did with their bodies prevented them from swallowing. Even with his longest kept projects, he'd never fed them so frequently, or spent so much time with them. They'd hold his interest for about two hours of the day and then he'd leave them to wallow in their misery as he planned their disposal. Once he decided where their body would be disposed of, their fates were sealed. There was no turning back.

He'd already deviated a vast amount from his normal methods for the salmon-haired guy strapped to his table. He should have picked a disposal site within the first day of taking him. He hadn't done so. He wasn't entirely sure if he would anymore. Objectively, he knew it was a risk to keep Natsu alive. The man knew his name, his hometown, his proclivity to commit crimes that could land him a death penalty. If Natsu ever escaped, he would be the greatest danger to Gray's lifestyle. So Gray could either kill him immediately and end that threat, or he could take on the challenge of making absolutely sure that Natsu couldn't leave. Ever.

"Morning," he said. The fluffy white blanket was low on Natsu's body, just over his hips. Gray watched the blanket, slightly perplexed with himself for its presence. He'd never shared one of his blankets with a project, never taken the effort to buy one specifically for a captive, much less washed one to cater to their preferences. Gray had been allowed to get a part time job when he was seventeen, and the blanket had been the first thing he'd bought with his own money. The winters in the rehabilitation home were agonizing. He didn't exactly socialize with the other children, so he'd never felt sorry enough for any of them to allow them to share his blanket. He'd never cared about them, strangers. That apathy extended to people that he'd met when he had held a job, to those who tried to get close to him and failed because he didn't find them interesting, to the rest of his projects. So far, that apathy had applied to everyone… except for Natsu. He sighed in confoundment, his shoulders falling slightly. With all he'd done, Natsu hadn't broken. He let his left hand fall over the man's abdomen, once more tracing over the designs of the dragon, the white skin, perfectly etched into tan flesh. He thumbed over it. Natsu shifted slightly beneath his fingers, the muscles of his abdomen tightening. Wide green eyes were pointedly looking away from him, a small flush over tan cheekbones.

"M-morning," he mumbled back quietly. Gray wondered if Natsu felt uncomfortable with how much he would touch him. It struck Gray that no matter how much he hurt his previous projects, he'd never been so tactile with any of them, he'd never wanted to be. In fact, even when he first took Natsu, he hadn't been so… indulgent. It was only after he remembered who Natsu was that he'd started tracing over his scars, falling into the familiarity they'd had with each other as children without even realizing it. Natsu had never hesitated to hold his hand, to hug Gray and ignore the concept of personal space entirely. Gray had eventually grown comfortable with the boy enough to playfully pull at his hair to get him to pay attention, to hug him back just as tightly, to trace little pale hands over his skin to make sure his bruises didn't hurt too bad after he fell down or after they got into fights with others or with each other. As soon as he'd realized who was strapped down in his basement, he'd easily regained old habits, even as he'd thought about how to break the man down.

Gray smiled at Natsu, pulled out some chicken strips and french fries, a strawberry milkshake. Natsu ate quickly, eyes lighting up as Gray put the straw into the milkshake and placed it near his lips. He sipped rapidly, his tongue peeking out to lick the taste of strawberry ice cream from his lips.

Gray knew how to break Natsu now. He just didn't know if he wanted to ruin the fragile, almost warm atmosphere. The way he felt taking care of the man, letting him use the blanket, the pillow, bringing him food, even the short conversations they had, reminded him of the warmth he'd felt when he was small and his older sister would hug him tight and tell him everything would be okay, that someday, they'd be the ones in control. She'd had severe anemia, and was often very cold, but she never failed to make Gray feel a little lighter, stronger. Then she and Silver were gone, both of them just dropped off the face of the earth, and Gray had been miserable and more protective of his mother than ever, terrified. He didn't believe Silver could be beaten by anyone, so his assumption was that his father took his sister, and that he would come back for his mom. Gray hadn't even smiled since their disappearance until he met that strange energetic little boy that held his hand and hugged him, tight and warm the way his sister had.

Gray felt his eyes clouding as he realized what that feeling he had around Natsu was. Natsu felt like home. The way home felt before everything had fallen apart. Home before the nightmares. He placed the empty box of takeout and the cup on the floor, needing the slight distraction so that he wouldn't break down. Natsu had already seen him cry in the midst of a panic attack. He didn't want to appear weak.

"So," he started, "I've got a question for you."

Natsu blinked in confusion for a moment. He'd assumed that if Gray had a question he would demand an answer, rather than making amiable conversation.

"Okay…?" he asked, looking at Gray quizzically.

Gray leaned back in his seat, legs crossed.

"How come ' _Cana'_ hasn't reported you missing?" He was genuinely curious. He'd been keeping track of the news, had even accessed the newest missing persons reports in the area, only to find not one description or picture that matched the man on his table. He knew Natsu had been tortured before. That much was perfectly obvious. Now, he was starting to wonder if the people who'd hurt him before were still out there, if Natsu was in hiding. He could understand if he used an alias, Gray had a few of his own, but he was beginning to wonder if the fact that he hadn't seen Natsu on the footage at the docks wasn't a coincidence, but a deliberate effort to remain out of sight. He hadn't strapped down the man's chest, and suddenly he shot up into a sitting position, staring wide-eyed at Gray, all the color draining from his face as Gray's question sunk in.

"Did you cover my face when you took me?" he asked, his voice frantic, panic seeping out of him.

Gray startled a little, but he wanted an answer to his own questions. Natsu was growing a little too comfortable, thinking he could demand answers from him first.

"Why didn't she report you-" he began to ask again, but didn't get to finish because Natsu was yelling now.

"Was _my face_ caught on the _cameras_ at the docks?" he shouted out, eyes a shade darker, furious and indubitably scared, fists clenched in his restraints.

Gray didn't tolerate being yelled at. He hadn't tolerated it since he was a child. He stood in one swift movement and backhanded Natsu across the face, the right side of his head slamming back against the wall.

Natsu instantly looked furious and Gray didn't get a single word in before Natsu growled out, "You don't fucking get it! They'll find out, they'll know who owns the boat, they'll get to Cana!"

Gray struck him again, fisted his hand in salmon locks and yanked Natsu's head back. He leaned in close, anger thrumming through his veins for a reason he couldn't understand. "She special to you, Natsu?" he asked, voice low and murderous.

Natsu glared at him, teeth gritted as he bit out, "Yes." Then his eyes were blinking back angry tears and he began speaking in a pleading tone, "You have to let me go. I have to get to her, they'll kill her like they-"

Gray cut him off, his left hand wrapping around that tan throat, completely _livid._ "You want me to let you go," he said, his voice soft and careful, "So that you can protect your girlfriend?"

Natsu managed to let out an outraged, "She isn't my-" before his voice caught low in his throat as he struggled to breathe.

The grip around his airway slackened and Gray snatched his hand back, taking one step in retreat as his eyes widened. He didn't understand his actions. He'd lost control and now he was scrambling to get a hold of himself.

His captive gasped once, taking in as much air as possible as soon as the pressure on his throat was gone. Once he could speak, he forced out, "She's my _nakama."_

And Gray saw _red_. Felt the color invading his mind and his limbs as if it was a physical sensation, as if it crawled over his skin with scorching heat that refused to be held inside, as if it would burn him alive if he didn't let it out and before he realized it, he was beating the man on the table until he hit just below his temple and he went limp. Still, Gray felt a wrath eating away at him. It wasn't enough. Beating him unconscious wasn't enough. Not after all this. Not after making Gray feel all of these conflicting sensations and then making him psychotically possessive. Nakama. Natsu was all Gray had, but the man had allowed himself to form other connections. To depend on someone else. That was intolerable. Inadmissible.

Natsu knew that saying the word, telling Gray that he'd expanded his family, was a mistake the second it crossed his lips. Then Gray went apoplectic, raining down a fury on him and his world went black.

When he opened his eyes again, it wasn't because he had recovered and no longer needed rest. It was because a gunshot was piercing the air, and the bullet was hitting the floor beside him, cracking a blue tile, the noise echoing against the high ceiling and Natsu jumped away from the point of impact, completely alert and shocked by his surroundings. He wasn't in the basement anymore. He wasn't strapped down. The tiles on the floor were small squares of blue lines in neat rows, a couple of drains in the center, the light blue color stretching up the five foot walls that surrounded the ground area. A pool. A public pool, abandoned judging by the mold growing on the sides.

However, the change of scenery wasn't his main concern. He wasn't alone in the dry pool and Gray wasn't in there with him. Instead, a massively built man with long, tamed brown hair and blue eyes who looked at least a foot taller than him and just as confused as he felt was also scrambling away from the chipped tile on the pool floor.

A second gunshot rung out and both of them saw the exact same tile chip into smaller pieces before they simultaneously turned toward the direction the bullet came from. There was a single ladder to exit the pool. That ladder had a dark haired man sitting on the highest rung, eyes full of boredom as he observed them, a revolver in his right hand. Gray.

The man in the pool was about seven feet away from Natsu and he held his head like he was afraid it would fall off if he let go. He seemed to have trouble standing straight and Natsu had been able to smell his inebriation easily the moment he woke up. The guy had obviously been drinking and Natsu didn't think he was quite aware of the situation he was in yet if he thought a headache was a more pressing matter than the fact that Gray had a gun pointed in their general direction and his aim was good enough to hit the same pale blue square tile from the edge of the pool.

"We're going to play a game!" Gray informed them, voice high in mock cheerfulness that didn't reach his eyes as they bore into Natsu.

Natsu understood at once that he needed to tread carefully, because that gaze wasn't soft or caring like it had been for the past few days. It was like Gray was teasing him, making a mockery of his situation, those dark midnight eyes fading back to the shade of darkness that had danced in them when he'd crucified Natsu to a wall. He felt every muscle in his body tense in dread. The man at his side did not seem to get the message.

"What the fuck? No. We had a deal," he argued.

Gray merely tucked his feet under one of the lower rungs so that he wouldn't need a hand to steady himself and he pointed the revolver directly at the man.

"Deal's off," he told him, his demeanor calm.

The man went pale and took a frightened step backwards, but he didn't quite accept his reality yet. "Stop… Stop playing games," he said, his voice climbing decibels with each new syllable, "J-just put it down and… and we can-"

Gray tilted his arm only one inch to the right, pulled the trigger, and the bullet flew so close to the man's head that strands of his hair blew back with the proximity. Natsu gritted his teeth and inhaled slowly to keep himself from doing something stupid because this Gray wasn't the one he could talk to or negotiate with. This was the monster from the books that people didn't let themselves read in the dark. This was the killer from the news stories that parents didn't want their children to know about.

"I'm not going to fuck you," Gray said to the man calmly. "And you're not going to fuck me," he continued, "And we are going. To play. A game."

His finger tightened around the trigger but didn't quite press down as his arm move one inch to the left, the implied threat clear. The next bullet would go straight through his head if Gray wished it to.

The silence dragged on until Gray smiled, full and pleased.

"One of you is going to die," he said, watching both of their reactions. The man he'd picked up at a new gay bar took another step backward and seemed to pale until he looked at Natsu and his eyes raked over him, as if judging whether or not he could win this supposed game. Gray felt a small wave of disgust ripple over his skin.

He let his eyes drift over to Natsu to see if he was similarly sizing the stranger up, but Natsu was looking directly at him, those green eyes searching his own and, after a few moments, dropping to the tiles on the floor in disappointment.

He willfully ignored the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach at the sight and went on, "The other gets to live and ask me to do one thing. One single thing. Anything. And I'll do it."

Natsu looked back up at him, his gaze furious. It was all just a game to Gray. The fact that one of them would die today didn't matter to him. He was offering some kind of reward to whoever won his little game.

But then the drunk man on the other side of the cracked tile spoke up and both of the other gazes in the room fell on him. "You'll set me free?" he asked Gray, sending one more calculating glance at Natsu.

Gray's grip on the gun tightened. Natsu stared at the man in growing alarm.

"If you win," Gray replied shrugging as if the outcome of his setup didn't matter to him either way.

The man nodded as Natsu inhaled and exhaled slowly, waiting for the punchline.

"Okay," the man finally agreed, still watching the gun in Gray's hand carefully, "So what's the game?"

Gray simply chuckled, checking the number of bullets left in the barrel, before saying, "That's it."

Natsu's blood ran cold as what Gray was expecting from them became clear to him. The man didn't catch on quite as quickly.

"What?" he asked, "What do you mean?"

Natsu was looking up at Gray in complete silence, his eyes wide and horrified as Gray looked back at him with not a hint of mercy in his stare. He started shaking his head slowly, not wanting to believe it. He couldn't. He didn't want to. He wasn't that person.

Gray looked straight at Natsu, not even sparing a glance for the stranger he'd picked up for the event. That man wasn't his focus for the evening.

"Neither of you is getting out of that pool," he said, voice clear and final, "Until the other stops breathing." Then he smiled, a small wicked smile, "Or after you both starve, but I don't think that's much fun at all." That much was true. Watching people starve was the most boring thing to watch because it was completely pathetic and by the time they stopped breathing they didn't even have the energy to gasp one final breath. It wasn't fun to watch someone start pulling out their hair and trying to eat it when they ran out of options, and biting their nails and sucking on the blood that rose when they bit too deep. It was just… sad and uncomfortable.

He wasn't being completely honest though. If Natsu was the one that came close to dying first, then he would shoot the other guy. Plain and simple. He hadn't kept him so long to let him die by someone else's hand. Looking at them both, it was obvious that Natsu was at a disadvantage, but the tan kid from his childhood had a habit of surprising him.

" _I can take anything!"_ he'd said back then. So Gray would see if he really could.

The temperature in the room seemed to lower several degrees and Natsu turned to glance at the man who was now staring at him in determination. Quickly he turned back to Gray.

"Gray, no. I can't do this," he tried to reason. But Gray wasn't trying to be reasonable. He was trying to be entertained. He also wanted to see if Natsu was capable of killing someone with his bare hands. He wanted Natsu to be as tainted as he was, so that he might understand, so that he wouldn't _want_ to leave. Because Gray wanted to keep him. He wasn't sure what exactly he would do with Natsu, but he knew that he wanted to mark more of his skin as a start. After that… he'd figure something out. Maybe he'd even bring out the heroin again, just to take care of him again. It didn't matter. Natsu had brought back the memory of Lyon, but then he'd kept all the nightmares away. Even on the days when Gray hadn't hurt him at all, simply having him there kept the nightmares at bay and that was… relaxing. It was something Gray wasn't willing to let go.

Then the man was tackling Natsu to the ground and Gray was watching Natsu struggle intently, his grip on the gun tightening. He didn't even allow himself to blink. If Natsu didn't kill the guy, Gray would. Natsu was branded with his designs. He felt uncomfortable watching someone else hurt him, but as Natsu looked in his direction one last time, tears in his resentful eyes, and started fighting back viciously, Gray felt his blood cool, his pulse slowing as he calmed down.

Because an enraged Natsu in the midst of a fight was like a precious jewel. It was difficult to look away because the sight was entrancing.

The stranger was still over Natsu, punching him repeatedly, until Natsu slid to the side just before one punch landed reached out to grab the man's wrist, pulled it toward him instead of pushing it away, and bit into the skin as hard as he could. The brunette yelled out his pain as he reared back and away from him, giving Natsu just enough space to kick his foot straight into the man's jaw. That dazed him, made him fall to his side and Natsu took advantage of that to try to run away. He didn't want to kill him. He wouldn't be murderer. Not for some sick game. Not over a man he didn't even know deserved it. This man wasn't like them. He just wanted to live and Natsu wasn't an idiot. He knew Gray had no plans of letting the guy go.

"Gray, I don't-" he started shouting, but the other guy in the pool latched onto his ankle and knocked him off of his feet, yanking him backward and bringing one arm around his neck, locking him in a chokehold.

Natsu tugged at the arm desperately, but felt no leeway and he elbowed the man's ribs, turning to knee him in the crotch in the hopes of momentarily incapacitating him, but he missed and his knee hit the guy's thigh as he lunged forward, climbing over him as he held Natsu's wrists over his head and proceeded to repeatedly crush his ribs with his knees.

Every breath caused searing pain in his lungs, and Natsu was already coughing up blood. He didn't want to be a murderer. He didn't want any of this. He felt hot, burning tears pour down the side of his face as he gasped for air. He didn't want to kill him, but if he didn't, then he would be the one to die and Cana… they had Cana. If his face was caught on the feed at the docks then they'd already figured out where he'd been, who owned the boat, and that the only person who ever visited him was Cana. Her father hadn't even been in town because she'd insisted she was old enough to protect herself and now Natsu knew just how wrong she'd been. He couldn't believe he'd gone so long without thinking about the possibility that his existence would get her tortured, or worse, killed. If he let himself die to keep his hands clean, then no one would come for her, no one would help her, and no one would ever stop them. No one else would ever know and get revenge for Cana, or for _her._

He grinded his teeth together to move through the stabbing pain in his chest and bucked his hips forward, causing the man to lose balance slightly and loosen his grip just enough for Natsu to get one hand free and scratch deep in his cheek, his fingers stabbing into the man's eye the feeling of slime and blood running down his arm as a result freaking him out more than the agonized screaming above him.

Suddenly the weight flew off of him, the air felt cold around his fingers, and the man was holding a hand over his right eye, tears streaming down one half of his face and blood pouring down the other.

His one undamaged eye was locked on Natsu's form with a look of such deep hatred that made Gray point the gun directly at him. He wasn't paying attention to Gray or the gun anymore and Gray had a strong suspicion that he wouldn't care if Gray killed him anymore as long as he got to watch the life leave a pair of stunned green eyes. Gray had been growing more and more tense with each drop of blood that slipped out of Natsu's lips, with each crack he heard in his torso. He'd been aiming to kill just as Natsu had blinded the man's right eye. He didn't know if Natsu would be able to handle another round once the man recovered, but he also didn't want to interfere if Natsu had some kind of plan. He wanted to see how far the project he'd marked was willing to go. Whether or not he was worth the effort Gray was putting in for him, or if he'd just been lucky so far.

Natsu was backing away from the single eye that looked like it wanted to watch him burn alive, trying to stand on shaky legs, still out of breath and cringing as he felt his bones slowly realigning themselves. He'd felt that exact same feeling many times throughout his life and it would never cease to be entirely too disgusting.

He didn't get much time to prepare himself before the brunette in front of him was swinging at his jaw, knocking him down, and trying to stab him in the eye with his fingers. Natsu lifted his chin up and bit down of two fingers, violently, snapping the bones and watching said bones pierce the skin, an ear-piercing scream ringing in his ear as he spit blood from his mouth, the taste vile and metallic. He'd read an article once that said the human finger was as easy to bite through as a carrot, the only things that kept people from biting through were the way the brain processed pain and fear. He never thought he would feel evidence of the fragile nature of the human body breaking between his jaws. Fragility tasted like iron. How ironic.

He just wanted the man to stop, to back away so that Natsu could try to get through to Gray. Gray could be kind if he wanted to. Natsu had seen it, felt it as Gray kept him warm and helped him sleep, as he smiled at him in the morning. But the man above him wasn't relenting, and Natsu spared one moment in his struggle to look up at Gray, only to see the revolver in his hand aimed straight at the head of the man fighting for his life over him. Suddenly it dawned on him. Before, he'd thought that Gray wouldn't let the guy live because he'd seen his face or now knew his name. Now his intentions were clear. He'd never had a chance. The second Gray had picked the man out of some crowd, he'd been set to die. Even if he managed to kill Natsu, he'd still be killed right after. This was never about some game. This was a test for Natsu. A fucking test that he was expected to survive.

Then the brunette's undamaged hand was crushing his throat and Natsu swung his fist straight into the man's elbow, hearing the snap that reverberated against the tiles as the man fell forward onto him, rage written all over his features and Natsu felt like screaming because the sudden weight over him cracked his barely healed over ribs for a second time. The man was pulling back, slamming his body forward again and this time Natsu didn't scream because he didn't have enough air to do it. When he felt him pull back a third time, Natsu forced his shoulders up on bruised up arms at the same pace, and quickly made his move. He didn't have another moment to spare. He couldn't die here in some abandoned moldy pool in a beat up building when they could be starting the process on Cana. He wouldn't let her go through what he went through. He couldn't afford to suffocate or drown in his own blood knowing that she would be held for years, tortured and broken repeatedly in the name of scars and 'progress.' He owed her his life.

Gray's jaw was tight as he held the gun out steadily, aimed directly at the man that was beating Natsu down. His finger had been growing tighter around the trigger, close, so close, and not quite shooting yet because, as much as he wanted to kill the man and let Natsu heal, he had some irrational faith that Natsu wouldn't need or want his help. He wanted to believe his marked project could take care of himself, even if it felt like he himself was being stabbed with each passing second that the salmon-haired idiot didn't gain an advantage. He'd eased his hold on the gun when Natsu bit through two fingers, but then the onslaught of violence he took because of it had Gray tense again. He'd been counting down the seconds to shoot when the man pulled back a third time, and suddenly Natsu throwing his body up toward the threat in the blink of an eye.

Gray still held the revolver in his grip, but his grip slackened as he took in the view.

Sharp canines, perfect white teeth, were latching onto a pale throat, sinking into the flesh deeply. A river of red was erupting from where the skin parted, staining light blue dusty tiles, a pale brunette man, but most of all, tan, flawless skin. The color fell in rivulets all over him, his flimsy white shirt soaked in it, clinging to his body, cut off just high enough to expose the white dragon head once again covered in the original crimson color. Lithe, tan muscles were all strung together tight as Natsu put all of his energy into this final attack. Salmon pink locks of hair were matted with blood, sweat, and tears. There was a scream, loud and horrid, that cut off abruptly as Natsu's jaw tightened and the pale flesh ripped from the man's throat, and he fell back, one limp arm flailing at his side, a bloody deformed hand coming up to his neck as he gasped silently to no avail, the blood forming a thick puddle beneath him as it oozed from his torn veins.

A couple of weeks earlier, the image of a man missing a chunk of his throat would have pleased Gray to no end. Now, he wasn't even looking at it. Couldn't even spare the man a single glance because, as he bled out, the only thing Gray could see was Natsu.

He looked mesmerizing covered in crimson fluid that wasn't his own, hair wet from his exertion, body rigid as he stared at his first kill. However, none of that explained why Gray kept staring.

Gray had seen the moment the flesh ripped free of its origin in between Natsu's teeth. He'd seen the spray of blood that rose in a perfect circle and fell in droplets over Natsu's shoulders, around his head like a murderous halo. He'd watched the way salmon strands of hair shook once as his childhood friend yanked himself back. At that exact moment, as the blood made contact with tan shoulders, a beam of light, a signal of the morning, came through one of the high windows of the old buildings in the woods and fell over Natsu as if it recognized an angel where it didn't belong, as if he deserved to be illuminated, his complexion ethereal as he breathed in harshly, panting as he spit aside the skin and blood dripped from pretty pink lips, from perfect white canines. All of that stole Gray's breath away. It all made him afraid to blink in case he missed something people didn't ever get to see in their entire lives. And even so… none of it, _not a single part_ of that sight could even begin to compare to Natsu's eyes. The wrath, the desperation, and the resolve in those eyes as the flesh came apart, the resignation swirling within them as he stared at the corpse before him, the determination that he'd seen shining through it all, in spite of the pain and exhaustion that Natsu had to be feeling, the way the light shined on green irises and made them glow as he stared straight ahead… it was hypnotic.

It was delicate and heart-stopping and Gray found himself lost in the memories of the boy he'd cared so much for as a child. He'd saved Natsu's life once. He didn't regret that decision now. The regret he did have, was not realizing what those hidden glances and pink cheeks meant at the time. He hadn't realized then, that perhaps Natsu had more than friendly feelings for him, or at least as 'more' as a child at the age of four could have. He just didn't know if those feelings had grown into anything that the green-eyed man could feel now. Gray had _scarred_ him. And today, he'd forced him to murder someone. It was precisely the worst time for Gray to stop and realize that Natsu… Natsu Dragneel was the most beautiful thing he'd even laid eyes on.

The thought felt like a punch to the gut and he felt his limbs trembling. He breathed in twice to regain his composure and forced himself to climb down the ladder to the place where Natsu remained on his knees, a small puddle of red surrounding him, the light still brushing faintly over his skin, his eyes staring forward, now hiding any emotions behind a blank gaze that unnerved Gray.

"Natsu?" he asked, coming to a stop about two feet in front of him, blocking his view of the body.

Natsu held still for a few seconds, and then slowly he let his head tilt back, his eyes meet Gray's midnight stare, and he remained silent for a long time.

Gray waited, unable to form words, much less sentences as he looked at the gorgeous man before him that revealed exactly zero of his thoughts or emotions. Then green eyes watered, tears pooling at the edges and his face showed every fracture he'd acquired from the pain, displayed the full strength of his agony, a tear slipped down his face, reaching the edge of his jaw and continuing its descent over his neck as he said four simple words.

"I hate you, Gray."

Just four simple words. Gray felt like he'd been gutted. He pointed the gun at Natsu's thigh, pulled the trigger, but even as Natsu felt the hot burning pain in his leg, he only let himself fall back on his calves. Then Gray shot at his other thigh, the blood trailing down to join the puddle beneath him, the colors the slightest tinge different.

"I hate you so much," he went on, two streams of tears mingling with the blood over the bottom half of his face. He didn't look away. He forced himself to look at Gray, to show him just how far he'd gone to break him.

Gray couldn't allow himself to look away as Natsu met his gaze with unwavering will. So he did the only thing he could think of.

He nodded. He'd heard the hatred of projects before. He'd never been so affected. He waited a beat of silence and then asked, "What do you want me to do for you?"

It was then that Natsu stared at him uncomprehendingly.

"What?" he breathed out, his body numb in its position.

"You won," Gray said, _you beat him, you managed to tear me down,_ "Are you going to ask me to let you go? Drop you off at a hospital and disappear from your life forever?"

He was giving him suggestions but he didn't know what he would do if Natsu took any of them. He didn't know if he could actually make himself let him go. He'd seen Natsu escape crucifixion. He'd never heard him beg. He'd watched as his skin, perfect, unharmed skin, retained every mark Gray left. He'd etched one of his favorite designs into the man's flesh. He'd witnessed Natsu kill a man, albeit in self-defence, and look like a vision from the divine afterward. He didn't know if he could give him up anymore. Not after he'd given Gray back the feeling of home. Natsu shocked him by saying something completely different.

Natsu thought about it. He knew this could be the one chance he had to leave, to never see Gray again, to spare himself any more pain. He knew what anyone else would say in response. Anyone else would jump at the opportunity. And he _did_ want to leave. He just didn't have anywhere to go. He would be dead anyway, starved eventually. Or they'd find him and kill him or take him back and- no. Never again. He'd rather die. And even if he had somewhere to hide, he had bigger worries right then. They had _Cana._ He looked down at his currently useless legs, thought about how weak his body would be for a couple of days as it heals two bullet wounds and several broken ribs again, and looked back at Gray. His vision was starting to tint at the edges, blood still seeping from his wounds. He couldn't get to her like this. He made his single request.

"Save Cana," he said, his voice devoid of the cold tone it held a few moments before. This time, he needed to know that they wouldn't take someone else from him, that they wouldn't kill another person that he considered family. He had never been able to find them again. But when Gray had taken him to the upper floors of the house in the woods, they'd passed a room with a series of computer screens set up on three desks against the walls. He didn't know how skilled Gray was, but if he had a real shot at getting her safe, Natsu would sacrifice his freedom for it. Gray was a monster, and he'd turned Natsu into a murderer and he hated him for it, he hated him so much it hurt in his chest, but he was still not as depraved, not as insane as they were. Not by a longshot. If he had to put his faith in one, he'd put his faith in the one who didn't mind getting his hands dirty. For Cana.

Gray couldn't understand it. Natsu was screwing himself over for another person, and yet, even after all he'd been through, he was still strong enough to make that choice. To stay in Gray's hold. He wasn't doing it for Gray, Gray knew that, but no one ever chose to stay with him before. No one ever actively decided that remaining under his control was preferable to the alternative. He'd pitted two projects against each other a couple of times, always making sure the survivor died at the end, but each time he asked them what they wanted, they'd chosen life as they'd known it before. Natsu had chosen Gray. He'd chosen to stay with the man he said he hated. Gray had never seriously considered setting any of the others free, but Natsu, the only one he'd considered allowing to leave, chose to remain with him. Maybe he was secretly an extreme masochist, maybe Cana was more important than his own safety, maybe he had a deathwish, or maybe, on some level, Natsu actually enjoyed the kill. The thought lit a flare of hope in his chest.

"Okay," he said. He would save Cana from whoever they were. He'd do it, if it meant Natsu would be grateful. If he would hate Gray less for it.

Natsu could do nothing more than nod gratefully, resentment still in his gaze, just before he slumped forward and Gray caught him in his arms. He looked around the pool area, realizing he would just have to come back and dispose of the body later. The dead man meant nothing. Natsu was currently more important.

Once Gray drove them back to his house, carrying a limp Natsu in his arms, he headed into the bathroom. He made quick work of removing the bullets, disinfecting the wounds, stitching them up, and cleaning Natsu. Dried blood wasn't a look he wanted to see on him.

He carried him gently back to the basement, placing him down slowly on the table, strapping down his ankles and wrists one more time. He picked the blanket off of the floor where he'd left it in his frenzied state just five hours earlier. Natsu let out a pained whimper in his sleep and Gray pulled the chair closer immediately, brushing back soft strands of hair from his face.

" _I hate you, Gray… I hate you so much."_

Gray stared freely now that Natsu wasn't awake to fidget or look uncomfortable with his attentions. Even without the blood, even without the halo or the beam of sunlight of the early morning, or the way his eyes flashed with a hardly decipherable mix of emotions… he still looked the same. Gray was finally getting that feeling, the one they talked about in the movies, that moment when you're looking at something cracked and imperfect and it still steals your breath away. It was so stupidly clear that he wondered how he'd missed it before.

He stood from his seat, just enough to lean over Natsu, to get a closer look. He let his fingers trail over that jawline, let his hand caress a tan cheek. Natsu unconsciously leaned into his touch, a habit even his hatred couldn't break, not while he lay there unaware of the world around him.

"You looked beautiful, Natsu," he whispered, a secret he had no intention of revealing, "Tearing that man apart. Covered in his blood. Your eyes were so… alive."

Natsu mumbled sleepily into Gray's hand and Gray pulled away, clenching his fist. He couldn't let himself go that far. He wouldn't cross that line.


	9. Her

Gray found the vein, injected the liquid. It wasn't much, but he knew Natsu wouldn't be standing up for a day or so. His ribs had broken too many times, he'd lost too much blood, and then Gray shot both of his legs. He didn't have a _good_ reason for doing so. He thought Natsu would have asked to be set free and he didn't want that so he shot his in the hopes of getting him to request being cured. Apparently, all that had done was convince Natsu to rely on Gray to save someone _else._ Gray's intention had been to keep Natsu from leaving, but Natsu had trusted him with a task, even through a haze of sudden hatred. It was surprising.

It also made him feel a pull of guilt in his abdomen that he hadn't felt in years. The other reason he had for shooting Natsu made even less sense. He hadn't just wanted to incapacitate him. Gray had already seen the limits of Natsu's healing and the weakened state it left him in afterwards. He wanted to be able to touch Natsu, to talk to him, without the man putting up a fight now that his emotions surrounding Gray were entirely negative. He wanted Natsu to be so physically drained that he could hardly move, so that Gray wouldn't have to tie him down, so that he could pretend for just a day that Natsu was with him of his own free will.

And Gray _did_ have to talk to him. He figured that if Natsu was so worried about the cameras at the docks, then whoever 'they' were had access. That meant that Gray was either looking for someone like himself, or for someone with connections in different government offices. The fact that Natsu said, "They sent you to get me," made Gray think it was an organization, not a single person. However, neither of them weren't anywhere near their hometown. If 'they' had gotten a hold of Natsu there the first time, and Natsu had said they couldn't keep him when he was an eight year old so Gray was suddenly cringing at the knowledge that someone must have abducted him not long after Gray was sent away, then _they_ weren't based in a single state. They were crossing state lines. They were bold and experienced and possibly just the kind of project Gray dreamed of but never dared to hope for.

It was about twenty minutes before green eyes opened blearily, calm and relaxed when they landed on Gray until Natsu blinked and then flinched, his eyes shutting and his body scooting a little closer to the wall and away from Gray. Gray clenched his jaw, but didn't comment on it. If he said anything, it might give away just how much that action on Natsu's part hurt. He didn't comment on it because he knew, he didn't deserve to. He didn't regret a single thing he'd done to Natsu since their reunion. Every action had a purpose, and while he hated that the result was Natsu's resentment, he wouldn't change any of the things he'd done. They had given him insight into his childhood friend's mind. Everything he'd done had sparked his interest in the salmon haired man and he felt something real and tangible and possessive for the first time since his childhood. He wouldn't give it up for the world. He wondered idly, if maybe he wouldn't even give it up for _her._ But that was a pointless musing. She was gone. Probably dead.

Gray sat in the chair beside the metal table. He didn't touch Natsu. It felt like he would be intruding on the man's thoughts. It would be so much easier to kill him, to spare him any further pain, to end his misery. It was a scary thought because Gray had never killed someone because he wanted to _spare_ them. It wouldn't feel right. He just wanted it to feel right again. The problem was, everything that felt so… right… with Natsu, had never been a preference with anyone else. It felt right to hold him. It felt right to take care of him. It felt right to see intricate marks of his own making on the man's skin. It felt right to see him in his bathtub instead of in the basement. A lot of things felt right that would never feel right with another project.

"Hey," he said.

Natsu breathed in and out slowly, turning toward Gray. Green eyes widened when he realized the ease of the motion. He shakily forced himself up, legs drifting over the edge of the table, his movements slow and careful. He sat in front of Gray, the blanket beside him because he didn't have the strength to lift it over himself after the strain of lifting his own body to a seated position. Gray took the fuzzy blanket it his hands and wrapped it around tan shoulders.

"Why am I…?" Natsu began asking, his words trailing off. Why wasn't he restrained. Why was Gray being nice again. When was he going to snap again. Natsu looked into midnight blue eyes frustratedly. Why was Gray here anyway? He should have been out looking for Cana.

Gray saw the confusion, and then the agitation, and he spoke before Natsu could accuse him of anything. "I need you to tell me about 'them.' I don't know what I'm looking for."

Natsu froze and instantly his face was five shades paler, his eyes were wide, and he was gripping throat. Gray saw what was happening and quickly brought the bucket out from beneath the table and in front of Natsu, bile filling it up a third of the way. Natsu looked weak, frail, and Gray studiously ignored the way his stomach twisted guiltily. He brought out a lid and placed it over the bucket so that Natsu wouldn't have to smell it.

"I gave you morphine, to help the pain," he added, "It can have that effect sometimes." He shrugged. He'd given Natsu morphine because it sometimes made people tired and, with how weakened the man was, it would hit his body harder than usual, slow his movements so that he and Gray could be civil without the restraints. The scenario was far less controlled than Gray was comfortable with, but he figured Natsu would need some feeling of control after his first kill. The first kill was always an impulsive decision, and Gray had forced Natsu's hand and taken away the freedom of it. Natsu looked sick and Gray was starting to feel foolish for thinking Natsu might have enjoyed it. He hadn't made the decision to kill on his own. Gray killed to feel like he was in control, but he'd forced Natsu into the situation and taken his control away. Natsu wouldn't have enjoyed it at all and that was Gray's fault. Still, he knew how to fix it.

Natsu looked at him quizzically when Gray held out his hand. Natsu didn't plan to take it. He didn't want to. But Gray waited. He waited and stared into his eyes and wouldn't look away until Natsu was tearing up, remembering the way Gray had stared him down at the edge of the pool mercilessly and made him murder someone innocent. Natsu took his hand, one tear slipping down. Gray had said he would save Cana. He was asking about _them._ If Natsu had to take his hand for his help, he would. He had no fight left in him.

Gray saw the way Natsu looked down to the ground as he took his hand, the way he was choking back tears, ashamed of the single tear that had fallen, the way his shoulders seemed to cave in on themselves. The fact that Natsu was still speaking the odd word, still making active decisions like taking Gray's hand so that Gray could help him, meant that he wasn't quite broken. He just felt like he was. That felt like a stab in Gray's chest, because their last activity was one that Gray had decided on in an attempt to give Natsu an option, not to break him. Killing someone wasn't supposed to be the thing that sent him over the edge.

He stood, pulling Natsu to his feet. That didn't last long. Natsu's legs gave out under him and his fragile grasp tightened on Gray, his arm caught on the surface of the metal table to keep himself from falling like a ragdoll. Gray pulled him in close and picked him up, holding him in his arms, against his chest, the blanket falling to the ground, Natsu shivering in his hold.

He didn't want to restraint Natsu, but he didn't want to leave him unrestrained and alone either. Gray didn't miss the look Natsu sent the drawers of drugs at the opposite of the room as soon as he realized he wasn't restrained. He'd gotten the drug out of the man's system and he wouldn't let him fall into addiction. Natsu hadn't begged him when he'd tried breaking him. He wouldn't let Natsu break himself either.

Natsu willed his eyes to stop stinging, shut them tightly. He hated that Gray's arms felt the way they did, that his hold and his touch still reminded him of her. He hated how his head felt light against Gray's chest, how the thud of the man's heartbeat was like a soft song that calmed him. He hated how Gray's hand felt cool and soft on his skin, how looking into midnight blue eyes made him feel stronger when he didn't want to feel stronger. He hated how he could say he hated Gray so much, and yet a mere day later he couldn't be sure of it because Gray was wrapping blankets around him and offering to save a part of his family and carrying him without restraints, giving him morphine for his pain. He just wanted to break. He thought that was what Gray wanted. Yet every time he came close to shattering, Gray held him together and Natsu didn't know why anymore. He didn't know why Gray wouldn't just kill him and save himself the trouble of keeping him locked up.

Gray paused at the doorway, picking up the chain on the outside of the door. For what, Natsu couldn't be bothered to ask. He just kept his eyes shut and heard the rhythmic beat of Gray's pulse and the jingling of the chain as it swung in a pale grip. When Gray put him down, it was on a bed. The mattress was so soft that Natsu's eyes shot open, startled. Gray held onto the chain.

"Tell me everything you know about them," Gray said, voice quiet and careful, like if he was approaching a cornered animal.

Natsu didn't like the way Gray looked at him since the body dropped. He kept looking at Natsu like if he was some precious glass close to breaking that needed to be protected, that was _worth_ protecting, but Natsu knew it was an act. It had to be. Gray wouldn't have shot him otherwise. He wouldn't have forced him to murder someone if he really cared about him. He was doing this to fuck with Natsu's head and Natsu wondered if he was doing the same thing with his promise to save Cana. If this was some elaborate lie, Natsu would summon all his strength and fight Gray until Gray got sick of his resistance and killed him. Cana would want him to fight. The girl from the facility would have wanted him to die trying rather than give in again.

"They…," he started, not knowing where to begin. He took in a sharp breath, remembering the day he'd met them. He'd been diagnosed with cancer and Igneel was told that Natsu's condition was too advanced for any treatment to work. The doctors had said they were sorry and Natsu had pretended to be asleep so that they wouldn't leave the room, so that he could know the truth. It turned out the truth hurt more than a lie. Then some man with short, gelled back hair and a beard had come in and gave Igneel an offer he couldn't refuse. An experimental trial. If Natsu survived it, he would live, and quite possibly never worry about getting sick again. It sounded perfect, and he'd said, ' _The boy only needs to be held at the facility for a year.'_ One drawback. Igneel thought it was worth it. When he talked to Natsu about it, Natsu was nervous and he protested being away for that long, but they'd agreed to visiting hours each week and Natsu was all Igneel had left. He couldn't make his dad go through losing him, not after he'd just lost Zeref the previous year. So he agreed. It was the biggest regret of his life. Then, after twelve months of hell with all of the injections that made him feel like his own blood was eating away at his very bones, they told Igneel he could come get Natsu. The treatment was a success. The cancer was gone. Igneel came to pick him up. The door to his sterile white room opened. He started running toward Igneel's open arms. Igneel's head exploded. The man that they'd met in the hospital was behind his headless corpse with a gun pointed to the spot where Igneel used to be. Blood coated the walls of the room and Natsu ran forward sobbing, holding Igneel's hand and begging the man to save him, to save his dad, not quite understanding that the damage was irreparable. He'd been locked in that room with Igneel's rotting body for two days, the stench causing him to vomit and in turn worsen the smell, tears leaking every so often, his voice scratchy and pain-inducing after so much screaming. How was he supposed to explain that?

Gray saw the tightness in Natsu's jaw, reached his hand out to touch Natsu's shoulder, and Natsu's eyes shot up to meet his, before they slowly trailed over to the point of contact in slight horror. Gray removed his hand hastily.

"I need to know about them to find Cana," he said. Natsu grinded his teeth and nodded, staring at the fuzzy pink blanket on the bed and wondering if Gray specifically placed it there with him in mind.

"I had cancer when I was five," he started. That was probably the best place to start. "The doctors said I didn't have long and some guy came up to Igneel and said that… they had a new treatment." He paused, bit his lip, clenched his fists, blood trickling out of the corner of his mouth. Igneel would still be alive if he'd just let Natsu die the way he was supposed to. She might have lived. Cana wouldn't be in danger. He just ruined everyone that came near him. He looked at Gray, then looked away when the intensity of that stare became too much, stared at the ivory colored walls instead. Gray was ruining him now. Maybe it was divine retribution. Maybe he deserved it. He shook his head. "They took me to the facility. A year later they… they killed Igneel." His forced the words past the lump in his throat but they came out high and pained despite his best efforts. Gray was watching him carefully. "They kept me until I was eight and then I… I got out." Three years. He had thought the first year was hell. He had no idea the next two years would be worse.

Gray didn't offer him his sympathy. Natsu was glad. He didn't take pity well.

"The facility. If you escaped then you know where it is?" Gray kept on track. It didn't matter that Igneel died. It mattered even less that it made Gray feel a void inside. He wasn't weak.

Natsu shook his head. "It was somewhere near Chicago, but that… It doesn't matter. I sent an anonymous letter to the cops. The place was abandoned."

Gray smiled at Natsu's obliviousness. "It does matter. The number of rooms, the building structure. If they were developing new treatments, they would need a laboratory, several actually. The security they might have had. All of that can help me narrow down other possible locations."

Natsu stared at him in trepidation and a small amount of awe. He needed Gray to find them. He just didn't know if he wanted him to. If Gray, a monster in his own right, couldn't handle them, Natsu had no one else to turn to.

"How many projects did they have?" Gray asked.

Natsu stilled. "What?"

"Projects," Gray repeated. "How many of you?"

Natsu bit the inside of his cheek to keep from shouting. "You mean people."

Gray shrugged and Natsu bit out, "We were _patients,_ not _projects."_

Gray stared back at him, raising one brow. "I'm assuming that the treatment didn't take three years to work, and that made your body have your healing thing going on," he started, "Which means that when you were sure my carvings 'wouldn't scar' and that they 'weren't deep enough,' you knew from previous experience. Either you cut yourself consistently to be sure, or someone tried scarring you before. Given how fucking _terrified_ you were of your face being caught on a surveillance camera and you just said they killed Igneel, I don't think these people _played nice._ You're free to correct me if I'm wrong."

Natsu glared at him with all the frustration he could muster.

Gray payed his glare no mind. "So!" he said cheerfully, "How many _projects_ did they have?" Because people didn't torture patients. Psychopaths tortured their victims, their captives, their _projects._

"I don't know," Natsu mumbled. He sighed irritably. "There were… nine of us. That I knew of. Six that were still under the treatment at the same time as me. One of them… didn't make it." The young girl's death was what made _her_ snap and fight back. It got her killed.

Gray didn't know how to be consoling. He'd never really had the occasion before. "How many floors did the building have?"

Natsu wrapped one fist tight around the edge of the blanket beneath him. "Three," he responded.

"Was it on the edge of the city?" he asked.

Natsu shook his head. "We were surrounded by woods. The whole area was fenced in. Maybe a mile out in each direction," he explained. He remembered that much clearly. He'd ran that mile barefoot and run the skin over his ribs climbing over the fence. It healed quickly, but that didn't meant it didn't hurt. He had no idea if the others made it out alive. He had run for his life.

"Did they have solar panels?" Natsu blinked.

"...Yeah, they did," he replied. He didn't see how that was relevant.

Gray nodded and took hold of Natsu's left wrist, in one swift movement handcuffing him to the black metal pipe that held three long light bulbs, the pipe bolted to the wall.

Gray didn't meet his eyes. He just said, "A nightlight," by way of explanation, and left Natsu there, one wrist cuffed to the wall. It wasn't an adequate explanation at all, but Natsu knew he wasn't getting anything better than that. He sighed, leaning his back against the wall. He didn't like the room. It had bookcases lining one wall that made it seem almost like a study, but the bed was a single bed, and it was soft, but thin. Neither of those things bothered him, but the brick wall behind him did. The high windows with shut blinds bothered him more. The ivory walls looked too much like the sterile white of his memories, the one that was so easily stained by red. He fisted the blanket with his right hand, his other fist clenching where it lay stuck against a metal ring. He tried to calm himself, but nothing was working. He felt his breath coming short and he knew exactly what he needed to do to calm down, but no one was even hurting him at the moment and he would feel pathetic using he memory for something so trivial. Still the panic was flooding him and he forced himself to breathe in, to let the words out the way she would have.

Gray was headed down the hall to the room he kept his software in, to search for possible locations, and then he heard something he never thought he would hear again, a phantom from the oldest recesses of his mind. A voice singing softly.

" _And all the kids cried out…"_

Gray stopped walking immediately. The voice paused and he started thinking he was losing his mind until-

" _Please stop, you're scaring me…"_

He turned toward it, searching for it, his heart pounding in his chest.

" _I can't help this… awful energy,"_ it went on. Gray followed it, right back to the door he'd just walked out of. It wasn't her voice. It was slightly deeper but just as soft, the same syllables pausing at the same times, the same words stretched out at the same lines. It was her rendition and Gray felt himself wrapping his hand around his gun. She had disappeared. There was no way anyone else would sing that song in that way. No one else alive had ever heard it when she'd been around. She'd disappeared before Natsu and he even met.

" _Goddamn right you… should be scared of me."_ Natsu's voice broke slightly on the last note and Gray clenched his hand around the doorknob. He'd already unlocked the chain he'd left on it. He had his gun out now. He felt a pressing need to burst in and aim but he waited. He waited because he hadn't heard that rendition in decades. He waited because the recorded version on the internet would never compare, because it sounded so much like her he might cry if he didn't get to hear the ending line.

" _Who is in… control…?"_

The door slammed open and within seconds Gray was looming over Natsu, one hand tight around his throat and shoving him roughly against the wall, the other pressing the gun against his temple, midnight eyes crazed and furious, desperation swimming in their depths. Green eyes were wide and shocked, then a glimmer of fear crept into them and Gray would have felt satisfied if it had happened at any other moment.

Now, he just needed an answer. "Where did you hear that song?" His voice dripped with false sweetness and Natsu shivered, wide-eyed. The grip of that tan throat tightened and Natsu brought his free hand up to fight it to no avail.

The gun against his temple made a noise as Gray removed the safety.

Again, he asked, "Where. Did you. Hear. That song?"

Natsu felt like his lungs were ready to collapse in his chest from the lack of air and somehow, through the razor sharp pains in his chest he managed, "Ul… tear." A gasp ended that word as Gray released him and climb off the bed, his arm still holding the gun up, levelled straight at Natsu's head even if that pale arm was shaking violently.

"How do you know about Ultear?" This time his voice wasn't sweet. It was a rough broken sound laced with fear. Natsu had never heard someone sound quite that decibel of terrified. Not even at the facility. It was a sound of a man waiting for his chance at revenge. It made no sense to him.

Natsu focused on the question, "The medical facility." Mentioning it in connection to Ultear made him want to cry, but he stubbornly met Gray's eyes. She had once been all he had, all he could rely on. He wouldn't cry just speaking about her. She wanted him to be… strong. Even if he could barely hold onto that strength. She'd given everything up for him.

But then Gray was taking another step back, his arm stilling, his grip tightening, his eyes hidden behind his hair as he looked down at the wooden floor, his words as hard as stone. "They have her?" he asked.

It was Natsu's turn to look away, to feel the pain of the memory resurfacing. He shook his head. The tears flowed freely and he couldn't have held them back if he'd tried. Not now. "They killed her," he said, his voice breaking in the middle of the statement, his teeth grinding against one another as he tried desperately to get a hold of himself and failed.

 _They threw the girl into his room. He could smell her. Everything in his room smelled like disinfectant, and they always smelled like an excessive amount of hand sanitizer, but she smelled normal, like a bit of sweat, salty like the tears that trailed over her pale skin, and like flowers, maybe the laundry detergent. No one had been sent to see him other than the cleaners for the room and the man who left him a bag of food and water. He hadn't touched it yet. He knew he would throw up if he did._

" _I'll do it, I promise," she said, between sobs, "Just don't hurt my brother. Please!"_

 _They locked her in. From then on, she was the only one he spoke to directly. She was the one they sent in to clean him. She was the one they sent in with his meals. She was the one that ended up hurting him the most, the one that got beaten whenever he stepped out of line, the one he took beatings for. She was the one who held his hand when he was broken. She was the one that hugged him and rubbed soothing circles on his back when the hallucinations came and made him break into sobs._

 _She became his pillar of strength. She held onto him and kept him from falling apart, put him back together whenever he did. He got to know her. She told him they had killed her mother because she stepped out of line. That they showed her pictures of one of her brother. Dead. She told him her youngest brother was still out there and that if they hurt him it would be her fault. She just wanted to live long enough to see him again. She wanted to protect him. Natsu told her about his dad. And he told her about the boy that he and his dad had looked for, had tried to adopt into the family, the way the cops had said that information wasn't theirs to disclose unless they were family members. Natsu insisted that they_ were _, but they were still told there was nothing they could do. Natsu had cried hot tears of frustration, both when it happened and when he recounted the story to Ultear. Neither he nor Ultear ever used the names of those they were talking about, their names too special, the only things that weren't tainted by the facility._

 _One day, they had her inject a prototype for a new 'treatment' and Natsu had writhed in agony, the face of the man behind the glass engraved in his head, the feeling of acid in his veins burning him alive repeating on a seemingly endless cycle, his tears falling in waves and his eyes red, bloodshot. Afterward, he didn't speak for weeks. Then Ultear hugged him, took him into her arms, her cold touch brushing through the fringe of his hair, and she sang to him. She sang the most beautiful sounds he'd ever heard. And Natsu had latched onto the lyrics. She sang them brokenly, it was the second time he saw her cry. It was soft and soothing and slow like a lullaby, but when she was done she told him that one day they'd make it out._

" _One day you'll be the one in control," she whispered, "And then they'll be scared of you. One day… You'll be free. Just hold on."_

 _And Natsu had cried. He'd cried for his best friend. He'd cried for Ultear and her family. He'd cried for Igneel. He'd cried for Zeref. He'd cried for himself and how broken he'd become. And Ultear had hugged him close with tears streaming down her own face._

" _Just promise me you won't break."_

 _He laughed, but it came out like a half sob half wine and didn't sound like a laughed at all as he clung to her, his body trembling violently. He was already broken. But she hugged him tighter and he breathed her in and knew he would be okay. He was broken but he would be okay. She would be there to put him back together._

" _I promise," he said. Because she would always be there._

 _Then the youngest of them was killed by the new serum and Ultear had been the one forced to inject the girl. Meredy's death destroyed Ultear. So much so that she made a plan for the others to escape. She said it was full proof. That they would_ all _make it out. She'd never said that she would._

 _They'd made it to the lobby and she threw herself at the oncoming staff members, fighting and biting at those nearby, snatching one of their tasers before it could be used against her and putting up a fight. She'd looked over at Natsu one last time as he stood at the end of the fleeing patients and screamed, "Run!" just as one of them shot her, and Natsu saw the face of a person he loved explode outward in front of him for the second time in his life. He ran. The others ran. He didn't know how many made it out. He just knew that he did. And he knew that when he'd followed the police scanners, they'd visited the building and no arrests were made. The place was abandoned. He didn't let himself cry for her until he realized that they had gotten away with it. That they had killed her and Igneel and taken his control for three years and no one was paying for what he'd lost. How Ultear had given herself and possibly the little brother she spoke of with so much warmth and affection for Natsu and he wasn't even worth it because he hadn't been able to make sure a single person he cared about was safe._

Natsu couldn't stop the flood of tears. He couldn't stop the piercing sob that echoed in the room. He didn't want to accept that it was his own. He'd never told anyone, not even Cana, about Ultear. He had never wanted to think about her last moments again.

"It was her song," he mumbled. It was barely audible, but Gray heard it anyway.

He heard it and he felt a single fragile piece of himself shatter in his chest, a small flare of hope burning out and fizzling where it burned softly before. Her song. He remembered it.

 _He was sitting on the white tiles of the kitchen floor. The screaming from their room was loud, but no one would be around to hear it. Ur had stopped him again, had taken to swinging at his head with a frying pan, but she never swung hard enough and then his rage was hers to tame. Gray just wanted it to stop, he wanted her to stop. He wanted him to stop. He didn't want to hurt anymore. He just wanted to stop bleeding. He wanted his bones to stop breaking. He wanted his skin to stop bruising. He wanted Silver to disappear. He wanted a lot of things that he would never get to see._

 _He was crying to himself quietly, his arms wrapped around himself, his legs in front of him, ready to kick Silver away if he came back. It wouldn't stop him, but it would give him a bruise of his own and that might just make Ur smile at Gray when Silver went to work and ruffle his hair proudly. The thought wasn't enough to stop his whimpering. It wasn't enough to stop the ache in his ribs where Silver loved hitting him to hide the marks. He had just turned four. He wanted to be old enough to run._

 _Then thin cold arms wrapped around him and Gray broke out in sobs. Silver never hit Ultear. She was sick, something about her blood apparently. Silver would never touch her. Gray would always be safe in her arms. He sobbed for everything that was wrong with their life, for all the pain they had to go through, for every time he had to hear his mom being slammed against walls and do nothing about it. He cried for the fact that Ultear was the only person he knew could protect him. And she held his close against her chest and sang to him, a soft low sound, in a heartbroken voice. She told him that one day, he would be in control and Silver would be afraid of him and then everything would be okay. She wiped away his tears and told him he was strong. She told him everything would be okay and Gray believed her. And then Silver was gone and Gray had a split second of happiness and relief until Ur told him that Ultear was gone too and he felt his world catching fire and leaving too many ashes to breathe right. He'd started school a month later._

Gray saw red. He could feel his own pulse speeding up so much that his organs could nearly fail until the strain.

His voice was steady and deliberate when he forced himself to ask, to be completely certain of what he was hearing, "They killed Ultear?"

Watery green eyes looked up at him. He couldn't see Gray's eyes. He couldn't read the emotions that he might have if Gray faced him properly, but then he saw tear drops collecting at the bottom of the man's jaw and suddenly everything made sense. It was glaringly clear and yet it shocked him like nothing else could have. It hurt to know it, and he didn't want to know it and still he found himself saying it out loud.

"You… you were Ultear's… oh my god," he said, his sentences not forming completely, cutting off in sheer amazement at what he was coming to understand and he didn't have enough time to fully process the implications of it because Gray was shaking, and looking straight at him with a new darkness in his eyes, a new caged wrath that glowed from deep in his pupils and Natsu stared at him stupidly, unable to think, unable to move.

The words Gray spoke weren't spoken in a human voice, they were a growl from deep in his lungs that sounded pained and hateful and monstrous as he said, "I'll kill them. I'll kill every last one."

That was a promise. A promise Natsu was getting from a man who he now realized had just as much reason to hate the people he'd escaped from. It should have frightened him. It made him feel warm and hopeful and a fuzzy feeling he couldn't place until he thought of the drugs. Happy. The pain and the hatred and the promise in Gray's voice made him feel happy.

Gray tossed the gun aside and brought his hand up to Natsu's cheek, fingertips brushing against the edge of a tan jawline, coming to a stop right beneath his ear and his thumb, wiping away the tears that kept falling from green depths.

"They will pay," he stated. For what they did to Ultear. _For what they did to you._

Midnight eyes met green ones and Gray didn't even bother trying to stop the tears on his own face that fell to match. He hugged Natsu. He wrapped his arms around the man's neck and held on tightly, his tears falling silently on the fabric of his sleeve.

There was a long moment of quiet.

Then warm arms circled around his waist and Natsu's face was buried in Gray's shoulder, the wetness of his tears falling over his collarbone. Gray didn't care. Ultear's hugs made him feel safe and warm. When Natsu had hugged him on the day they met, he'd felt embarrassed but protected. He didn't know why that hadn't changed. He didn't understand. All he knew was that he'd been looking for a lead on Ultear and Silver since he was four damn years old, since before the nightmares, and long after them so that he could kill Silver. So that he could see Ultear one more time. Now he wouldn't be able to see her, but he finally knew whether or not she was alive. He finally had a clue as to where Silver might be and that was all because of Natsu. Natsu always brought him relief, even if Gray felt broken by the revelation.

Natsu hugged Gray close. He cried into his shoulder. He wanted to hate him. He wanted to hate him more than anything. Except he felt like Ultear and hugged him like they were still two kids at each other's homes and he wiped Natsu's tears away and it was unbearable. Because during his first year at the facility, before Igneel died, all Natsu had thought about was getting better and coming home so that he could look for Gray. All he'd thought about were midnight blue eyes and a pretty smile. Now Gray was in his hold and it was too painful to think about turning away.

The only other projects to see Gray cry were Lyon and Riley. They'd both died for causing him pain. But Natsu was different. Natsu wouldn't break. Natsu was breaking Gray instead and he was doing it effortlessly because Gray was letting the man take him apart piece by piece without putting up a fight. And even then, Gray felt grateful because no one was ever able to tell him a damn thing about Ultear or Silver. It was like the two had vanished into thin air.

Natsu was giving him the first breadcrumb in the trail he'd been searching for the majority of his life. He closed his eyes and breathed in slowly. Natsu always smelled a little like cinnamon. That hadn't changed with the healing ability. Natsu was Natsu and he would always be warm like the sun and he would always smell a little like cinnamon. Gray kept wondering if killing Natsu would be the best course of action and yet the thought made his arms wrap tighter around his captive. He didn't want to let him go. He didn't want to hurt him anymore but he just couldn't bare the thought of losing him.

He felt Natsu shaking in his hold and he hummed the soft version of the song… the version Ultear always sang. Soon, Natsu went slack in his arms and Gray slowly uncuffed him, and carried him back downstairs. Natsu's body would be stronger again soon and then Gray would have trouble restraining him. He needed to get him tied down before that happened. Before he woke up again. Still, Natsu unconsciously laid his head closer to Gray's heart and Gray felt himself growing warmer.

He would avenge Ultear. They were probably behind Ur's death too. She hadn't been the least bit surprised when they showed up. He would make them pay for turning him into a killer. He would skin them for daring to lay a hand on Natsu. He would rescue Cana.

What exactly he would do with Natsu after that, he would have to figure out later. He was growing increasingly certain that ending his life wouldn't be an option.


	10. Mine

Gray had hacked the Chicago PD's servers. He'd gone to see the decrepit building that once housed Ultear and Natsu. The building itself hadn't been registered with the city until after the anonymous letter. It made Gray's question all the more important. Did they have solar panels? Yes. And if the building wasn't registered, had its own power generator, and was close enough to a lake or river, then the rest of their buildings would be too.

Which meant Gray had his work cut out for him because none of their buildings would come up in any online search and he would have to look into sold plots of land without building plans for the past fifteen to twenty years at the very least and narrow down that list based on water sources and surrounding areas. They had to be far out enough for people to not hear screaming or gunfire.

He was just outside of his house, putting the key in, ready to head up to the study and start looking for possible locations when he noticed something on his doormat. He had a dark black doormat with charcoal-colored lettering saying 'welcome.' It had been a gift from some neighbor a year or so earlier and he'd never gotten rid of it. On that mat, there were three salmon pink strands of hair. Instantly, he was on edge. He'd left Natsu bound and unconscious and there was no way he could have gotten out on his own. Gray had a near-perfect eye for detail. Those strands hadn't been there when he left.

His hand gripped the doorknob and turned, his mind running through possible scenarios and discarding them as they came through, only one possibility forcing its way to the surface of his thoughts and infuriating him. He took out his gun and carefully made his way through the house, his eyes trained in front of him. He made his way to the basement and, sure enough, Natsu was gone. Gray set to checking the room for his weapons and all of them remained in place. Gray knew damn well that if Natsu had managed to get out the restraints in an attempt to escape, he would have taken a weapon. He knew where Gray kept them by now. Gray checked the drawer of heroin and other drugs. Completely stocked. Natsu wouldn't have been able to resist so soon. And he still hadn't fully recovered. He probably would have passed out from the exertion on Gray's front doorstep. Which meant only one scenario remained.

They _had_ seen the footage at the docks. Somehow, some fucking way, they had found Gray and _taken_ Natsu from him. And Natsu had ripped out pink strands of hair in an effort to let Gray know he was missing. They had been in his house. In his space. The place he went to sleep at night. And they had taken the only thing he valued at the moment.

Before, if Gray was pushed to the brink of fury, he would see red, or feel a cold sense of detachment that didn't match the color of his thoughts. Now all he could feel, like a living, breathing entity, was a blackness, a molten pit of tar, burning within and spreading through his system leaving him vibrating with the force of his hatred. They'd killed Ur. They'd killed Ultear. And now they'd taken his most prized possession and he was _ready. to. murder._

He knew how he could find one of their bases. But that process would take far too long and chances were that he wouldn't find the right one. He would show up, guns drawn, and find that whatever base he'd found didn't hold Natsu, but instead held a bunch of their new projects that held little to no value in his eyes. Unacceptable.

Instead, he found himself going upstairs to reload his gun, grabbing his katana in case he ran out of bullets, taking his phone, and heading out to the new car he'd stolen. Tinted windows.

They hadn't bothered to make it look like Natsu had escaped on his own, so Gray could only hope they assumed he didn't pose a real threat. That they thought he wouldn't come after Natsu, or that he wasn't nearly intelligent enough to actually find him should he try. He was counting on that.

He got to the docks, hacked the server the camera was feeding footage to, found out which office and what personnel were monitoring the area, and opened several tabs to deeply scour through each of their history on his program. Two of those employees owned empty plots of land. Only one of those plots was near a river. Gray took a screenshot of the directions to that location. Bingo. They had assumed that because Gray didn't cover Natsu's face when he took him, that he was just a run-of-the-mill amateur who didn't know how to hack anything or delete the footage and cover his tracks. The truth was, Gray hadn't thought it necessary at the time. Now, he was glad he'd thought that way. If someone had been monitoring the camera at the time of the abduction and Gray had deleted the footage, they would have found him faster with a digital trace and left no trace of their own for him to follow. Yesterday's mistakes. Today's advantages.

He turned the car back on and calmly drived out of the lot. He'd mostly grown out of his recklessness. Killing Riley had happened quite suddenly, a spontaneous idea that he hadn't been able to shove aside, a way to save himself the punches, the humiliation of being ridiculed for his pain. Killing Lyon had been a desperate attempt to stop the nightmares once he knew it was possible. Over the years, that moment, the decision to kill, was much less spontaneous. It started involving a lot more planning. It was a slower, enjoyable process where he watched someone, took in their habits, their routines, their lifestyle and chose a moment in which they were completely vulnerable to take them, to play with them, to hurt them and mutilate them and banish the nightmares.

Natsu was the exception. Gray took him impulsively. He hadn't been anywhere in Gray's plans and Gray had to admit that if he'd seen Natsu on the street without having memory of who he was, he would have passed him by. Natsu was too pretty, too bright, too flawlessly confident and if Gray had seen him in public, he would have assumed that the man was the kind of person who had a lot of friends who would report him missing, who would be difficult to get around in order to set the stage for an abduction in the first place. Gray usually chose victims people wouldn't notice. One look at Natsu would have made him assume that the pinkette didn't fit the bill. Natsu had been the most unexpected and shockingly perfect project that Gray had ever encountered, the only one he'd ever held for so long, the single project he thought he might not kill. If Gray couldn't kill him, no one else ever would. Gray had marked him. He didn't like the idea of anyone else touching him. It made his skin crawl.

He parked the car at the entrance to the plot of land. The road was all dirt and no pavement, the land stood covered in trees, thick and numerous. Gray wasn't deterred in the slightest. He stepped out, his katana shoved into his belt, his gun drawn, his heartbeat slow and calm. He could practically hear the choked off screams, see the spatter of blood, feel a pulse shortening out beneath his fingertips, witness the life leaving their eyes. He lived for this. He ached for this. He swung himself over the fence in one swift movement and landed on one of the thick branches of a lower tree, already jumping forward to latch onto another branch, to bring himself to a higher position. He needed this. His own little game of cat and mouse where he could rip the prey to shreds and go home and sleep soundly, knowing that he'd taken his prize.

He'd marked Natsu. Now he was here to claim him.

He kept climbing up, back and forth between two trees until he could see the top of a three-story building, maybe twenty feet wide, thirty feet long. He made note of the direction it was in and lowered himself back onto the thicker branches, making his way slowly through them, staying above the ground the entire time. He didn't for a second think that they didn't have traps set down there and he didn't have time to cautiously make his way through them. They had the prize.

It was half an hour before he reached the building, his waist level with the windows to the second floor. He'd used his phone to disable their surveillance and communications for about five minutes. They wouldn't have eyes on him. Which was just perfect because breaking into the second floor would have those on the third floor trying to figure out which floor beneath them had an intruder while those below would be worried about both of the floors above. The mass of them would meet in the second floor and Gray would slaughter them all.

He took one look in the window, inspected the layout of the hall inside, aimed his gun, and fired. The sounds was jarring in the silence and then there was chaos. The glass shattered and Gray swung inside, ignoring the so-called patients cuffed to beds behind glass panels on either side of him. None of them were his. None of them mattered.

He stood, three feet before the end of the hallway which led into two directions and waited. Five second later two men rushed in and collapses, a bullet in each of their heads. Gray was two close to miss. They were surrounded by woods, so he hadn't bothered with a silencer. He didn't want to hide from these guys. He wanted them to see him gunning for them. He also knew that those who came after him were only the help. Hired goons. The ones in charge would never come after him willingly. They be hiding behind a screen in a room on the upper floors, trusting their hired muscle to protect them. Gray ran down the stairs to the first floor. He didn't know how highly they valued Natsu, but if they thought of him as an important project he would be on the lowest floor, ready to be transported should there be news of a threat and Gray couldn't let them take him away while Gray was on the upper floors. Five guards impeded his pass on the stairs and Gray shot the closest one, diving beneath his falling body and using him as a shield as he shot at the men behind him. Two more went down and two were left, shooting at him, ignoring the body he hid behind. A bullet grazed his shoulder and Gray ducked, using that arm to throw the deadweight at the furthest guard and aiming directly at the closer one's head. One left. He only had three bullets left. The stranger threw the dead body off of himself, began raising his arm to aim at Gray, and Gray fired at his throat, enjoying the sound of the bone that held his spinal cord and his cranium together snapping.

Gray didn't have time to savor the feeling of control that flooded him. Two bullets left. He put the gun away, sticking it in the holster on his ankle and drawing his sword. He would save those bullets for a very… special moment.

He opened the door at the base of the stairs, and the flood of white hurt his eyes. The lights reminded him of a hospital wing, the smell of disinfectant thick in the air. He went down the hallway, saw the many so-called patients restrained down to their beds, hooked up to fluids that had them twitching and screaming, the sounds lost in the glass. Apparently they only soundproofed the patient rooms. Idiots. There were three in that hall that he didn't recognize. Then two men were coming at him with their guns pointed at his midsection and Gray slid forward the way he'd learned to when the P.E. teachers had made him play baseball, his body dropping into a low slant, one foot bent at the knee behind the other as he came into close proximity. Their movements were too slow and soon he was bringing up his sword to slice off the hand that held the gun for the first guy, and keeping the movement going, his sword slicing throat the second guy's throat. The first guy screamed and the sound echoed against the pale surfaces, playing back to mock the man's agony as his veins bled out through the wound. The second man didn't make any intentional sound, his tongue rolling back as he tried to speak and failed, the blood rising up from the exposed flesh and gurgling in his windpipe as he tried to breathe, as he drowned in his own little pool of dark red. It was funny how some people had darker blood than others. If Gray hadn't been occupied trying to get to the fourth room to see who was held in it, he might have stopped to admire the difference.

Gray saw the one-handed man using his left hand to reach for the gun and in one swift, irritated motion, sliced off the man's head. Nine men in under five minutes. A new record. He almost felt pride. Then he was looking at the captive in the final room and his eyes were widening in horror. He drew his gun and shot at the padlock in a hurried motion, knocking open the glass door and hearing the most terrified sound, a half-scream half-wail that tore at the man's throat as his skin poured sweat, salmon pink locks drenched with it, tan skin turning red and feverish, the muscles in that neck and jawline straining so hard Gray thought they might tear out of their place beneath the skin. He ran forward and ripped the needle out of Natsu's arm, tore the second needle from the other one. Those fuckes were giving him _twice the dosage._ None of the other 'patients' had more than a single needle stuck in _them._ They were trying to _kill_ Natsu.

Natsu was seizing now that the substance had been removed and Gray waited it out, holding Natsu close and singing to him in a slow voice that didn't match the frantic beat of his heart at all. Gray didn't know how to help someone in this situation. All he could do was wait. Anytime one of his projects had a seizure, he hadn't exactly wanted to help them. He didn't know how to now that it mattered. Eventually, it came to an end and Natsu went slack in his arms, all of his energy drained from him, his breathing harsh and exhausted and gasping as he lay his head on Gray's shoulder, hands too weak to fist into Gray's shirt and still weakly pulling at the hem.

"G-Gray?" came the small question, a confused and fragile tone that made the molten tar within Gray from earlier rise and burn in his lungs. He hastily removed the restraints on Natsu's arms.

Gray hugged Natsu tightly, pulled back to look into unfocused green eyes, and hooked one arm beneath the man's knees, one beneath his back, pulling him from the bed and kneeling down on the floor to hide him beneath it. Natsu looked even more confused, his attention falling onto Gray whenever he could keep his eyes open.

"They're still here," Gray explained, "I don't know how many are left, but I need you to stay hidden. Here." Gray took something out and Natsu's eyes went wide, his mind suddenly much more awake than before at the sight a gun. "It only has one bullet left. If anyone that isn't me comes for you," he clenched his fist and looked at Natsu with a cold look that spoke of years of experience in pulling the trigger, in ending lives, "Kill them."

Merciless. And still, Natsu found himself nodding, his grip tight around the handle, index finger on the trigger. Gray smiled, quick, small, breathtaking. And then he was gone and Natsu felt like he could learn to breathe again.

Gray felt the missing weight on his ankle and grimaced at the knowledge that he'd left Natsu nearly defenceless. One bullet. What good would that do if he missed? How would that help if there was more than one assailant? But he kept heading up, decapitating two men on the way to the third floor. He didn't have time for them. He knew the cameras would be running smoothly again. No one had gone for the exit. Gray hadn't heard a window break. They were up there, whoever remained, and they knew he was coming.

Gray put on his brightest smile and looked straight at the camera on the stairwell to the third floor. He raised his katana to his lips and licked the blade, his smile growing even wider as he made his way up the steps. He'd left the doors to the stairwells open, putting bodies at the doorways so the doors couldn't swing shut behind him, he'd done the same to Natsu's door, making sure that he would hear it if that gun went off. Natsu was still safe. That meant Gray could allow himself to enjoy this. To take his time terrifying his last kill of the day.

He tried the door handle. Locked. He rolled his eyes at the camera, took out one of his fake ID's, an alias he would have to discard after this incident, and held it out for the camera's view. He picked the lock and the door popped open. He took one step in and found himself eye level with the barrel of a gun. He didn't hesitate. He dropped, the gun went off, and he came back up, much closer to the enemy, his hand raised to disarm the man, his other hand sliding his sword straight into the man's shoulder, the hand holding the gun turning useless as the man let out an inhuman screech right by Gray's ear making him wince and punch the guy right in the jaw. The man fell to the ground unconscious and Gray put his sword back into its sheath, using his newly acquired gun to check the rest of the floor. It seemed the guy he'd just knocked out was the one left in charge of the base. Pity. Gray had wanted to have some fun.

He wanted to get back to Natsu, so he quickly scanned the contents of the computer, scanning through emails exchanged with a person called 'boss,' searched for a USB in the man's desk, relieved when he found one, disgusted with the sort of reports filed into it, deleted them, and downloaded the links that had been accessed from that IP Address within the last fifteen days. The USB wouldn't fit any more information than that and Gray figured he'd find something useful in those links. He shut down the cameras completely and took the tapes of the footage of that day. He wasn't about to have his face plastered over the news as some kind of vigilante.

He looked down at the man in his stupid lab coat and wondered what he should do with him. He wanted to skin him, but Natsu was alone and weakened and Gray needed to get him out of this shithole. He saw the metal handcuffs on the guy's belt and grinned. He would hancuff the man to the railing of the stairs so that he couldn't wake up and run or call for help while Gray got Natsu to the car.

As Gray took care of his situation, Natsu remained beneath his makeshift hospital bed, gun aimed at the doorway, eyes drifting shut and popping back open at random intervals as he tried desperately to stave off sleep. His grip tightened on the weapon Gray had left for him. He couldn't give in. Gray was counting on him to defend himself, to survive. Gray had come for him. He'd screamed for Gray, he'd hoped, all the while knowing deep down that Gray wouldn't find him, wouldn't save him, but he had. He'd stopped the treatment. He'd ripped the needles from Natsu's arms and waited out his seizure. He'd come to stop his pain, to let him feel and breathe and see something that wasn't pure white hot agony behind his eyelids as his skin threatened to rip itself to shreds and Natsu felt tears pouring out of his eyes because he was supposed to hate Gray. For a moment, he thought he did, but then the sight of midnight blue eyes and pale skin pierced his vision and Natsu had lost himself in waves of relief, of need, of gratitude.

He heard the door opening slightly further and saw the sheath of Gray's sword. He felt his arm give out, all his strength gone, drained, and then Gray was on his knees in front of him, pulling him into a strong, cold embrace that calmed his senses and made sleep pull him under, Gray's words playing over and over in the darkness.

"It's okay, Natsu. I've got you now."

When Natsu woke up, it was to a sight he'd never expected to see. Hatred lit within him, a fire growing steadily that threatened to rise from his throat and burn the source of its distress like a cornered dragon. He felt a snarl building up in his throat, his emotions too strong to allow words for the man before him, his arms pulling at the ropes that bound him to a chair to match the ropes his enemy was tied up in. Natsu would never forget that man's face. He would never forget the man behind the glass. That face was etched in his memory, tainting his childhood, darkening his view of the world. That face represented the taste of bile and blood, the smell of rotting corpses and insides, the sight of loved ones dying before him, the sensation of his entire body disintegrating at a molecular level and reforming into what that man wanted it to be.

A cold hand brushed along his collarbone and Natsu came crashing back to reality, his fury calming into the same routine hatred that he'd lived with for the majority of his life, Gray trying him back to earth and sanity.

Gray was maintaining a calm demeanor, but just barely. Based on Natsu's reaction, the man bound in front of him was some idiot on the sidelines who deserved a quick death. Natsu stared at the captive man tied to the chair and Gray watched Natsu closely, considering his options before leaning in just by Natsu's ear and saying, "He harmed you," in a low, sure voice, "Hurt you when you weren't his to hurt." He placed a great emphasis on the word _his_ to make it obvious just who Natsu belonged to now. "Tell me what you want."

Natsu took one look at the man, the memories of the horrors he suffered as a child all rushing back to him, that same face across from him staring at his agony behind clear glass panels because he 'didn't want to get his hands dirty,' sending in Ultear with subtle little reminders about her brother. About Gray.

Natsu looked into Gray's eyes, his own reflected in those depths, burning with a need for vengeance so pure that Gray felt his heart skip a beat at the sight of it.

"Make him suffer." It was simple. It's short. It lit a fire in Gray's heart that he wanted to witness burning in front of him. It made him stare at Natsu for a second as if he was the most precious thing in the world to him. At that moment, he probably _was_. Maybe he really didn't have to keep hurting Natsu. Natsu had just opened up a world of potential projects for him. A gift. A peace offering. And his request showed a glimmer of malice that threatened to cloud Gray's senses entirely. It was tempting. To have someone at his side who could watch and admire his work and never leave. So tempting he felt he might give in.

If he did, it would certainly call for a celebration, wouldn't it? A fire like the one crackling in his chest would mark the occasion well.

The man was waking up and his eyes went wide and terrified at the sight of Gray walking toward him with something thin held between his fingers. Gray's hand shot out to yank the man's head back by inky black locks, forcing black-rimmed eyes open.

"Gray?" Natsu called out, voice steady and seemingly calm and collected.

Gray took one step to the side and looked back at Natsu curiously.

"Yes?" he asked, his grip still in the man's hair.

Natsu met the man's dark, snake-like eyes and glared, hatred flaring through his stare as he spoke the words he knew would push Gray over the edge, "He shot Ultear."

Gray's grip became painfully tight. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to step away. He went back behind Natsu, stared at the man seated a mere six feet away who was staring at them in silent dread. "But he didn't kill Igneel?" Gray asked.

Natsu shook his head. That was what Gray needed to know. Most likely the guy had been ordered to kill Ultear. He wasn't anyone of high rank, not with the way his reflexes had failed him when facing Gray. This man wouldn't be the one Gray tortured for Ultear's death. That would come later, with the assholes in charge and he would savor it. Today wasn't about avenging Ultear. Today was about Natsu. Today was about forcing the man who had approved doubling Natsu's dosage into sheer agony.

Even though Gray was furious and seething and his wrath was just visible in every pore, he held back as he asked the man, "You thought you could touch him?"

He received no response. Only silence. He took one step forward, every muscle tense and precise in his movements. The man shifted uneasily in his seat.

Gray slid his fingers reverently over the scars along Natsu's exposed flesh, his arms, his abdomen, as he stared into the eyes of this man and asked, "When I clearly marked him as my own?"

In the blink of an eye Gray was back to hovering over the man, one pale hand squeezing around his throat as the other brought a needle right over the center of his right eye.

"I will make you wish that your parents had been slaughtered before they could have ever met," Gray spat out, "Before you could be born, before you could ever dream of touching what was _mine,"_ he growled, "Thinking that you'd survive it. And just when you beg me for death, just when you tremble with the need to stop breathing, I will start over again, until your kind finally understand that I'm coming for them." The needle started to pierce the retina and the screaming was accompanied by the sound of a melody that Gray hummed out and Natsu sang along to once he recognized it, both of them knowing that this kill was something they would forever remember, something they both needed and wanted and would always share, like the rendition Ultear had gifted them both.

When the bleeding finally stopped and the man lay half blind with heightened senses, Gray looked straight into the camera implant, right into the signal he'd programmed to activate in a high enough temperature, for example, anywhere inside the human body. It was a signal he'd already rigged to be sent to anyone trying to access the cameras at the latest hideout. Gray looked at the blind eye, at his audience.

"I hope you all realize, the people who know who I am and have seen my face are all buried underground. With the exception of the one that I branded, of course." He smiled, "I hope you're all prepared to join them."

And then the match was lit between his fingertips, the gasoline fed the flames and the last sight seen on a screen halfway across the world was the sight of a sinister smile and glinting midnight eyes that faded away into the blaze as the screams rang out in the room. It was quite disgusting, seeing a person burn alive from their own eyes, living it through them.

But Gray put out the small fire before it could burn his captive alive. Then he lit the flames again. And again. And again. Never long enough to kill the man, but just long enough for his to smell his own flesh burning when his eyes could no longer see it happening. Just long enough for the man to beg Gray to kill him, to end him. For the guy to sob and apologize as best he could, to keep trying even after his mouth was being seared away by the flames and he couldn't form sentences. Gray lit and put out the flames until the man's own brain shortened out from the strain of constant pain and fear, long after the implant had blown up in his right eye due to the heat and the signal stopped broadcasting. Gray lit the corpse one last time before going back to Natsu and carrying him, chair and all, outside of the warehouse.

Natsu's hand were tied together in front of him, his legs tied to the chair, his body strapped to the back of it, but his hands being in front of him mean that Gray could hand him a matchbox. Natsu stared at it in confusion before something clicked in his head. He smelled gasoline, even here outside. Gray was going to burn down the entire place. Gray saw realization light up in those eyes.

"Do the honors?" he asked.

Natsu took the matchbox, hesitated, then remembered the sensation he'd had in that room, the dosage from hell that made him plead for death a couple of times before Gray came for him.

He lit a single match and handed it to Gray. "It's all fired up."

Gray laughed, unable to help it, the memory of a little Natsu playing with the stove and deeming it 'all fired up' coming to mind. He tossed the match at the trail of gasoline that circled the edges of the old building and watched it go up in flames. "Now it is," he replied.

Natsu nodded. Gray put his hand into his pocket and kneeled before Natsu, looking into light green eyes. "I'm sorry."

"For wha-"

Gray injected the substance into Natsu's neck and watched green eyes drift shut. He couldn't very well travel to his next safehouse if Natsu was still conscious. He just hoped things wouldn't have to be like this for much longer. Natsu had shown promise. He'd shown malice. Natsu could be his equal. Gray had never searched for an equal before, but then, no one had ever made him want it before.

He carded his fingers through soft salmon pink locks of hair.

Natsu Dragneel.

 _What are you doing to me?_

He lightly traced the dragon head on one tan hipbone. He traced the rest of his scars, marvelling at the way they remained while the two places where the needles had gone in were already healed. He resisted the urge to pull Natsu into his chest possessively at the reminder of those needles and the reaction they'd caused.

 _Mine._


End file.
